The continuing standoff between Iran and the EU over Tehran’s desire to produce high-grade plutonium suitable for an atomic weapons program, which it denies it has, may end up in the United Nations, if the International Atomic Energy Agency decides to refer Iran to the Security Council. The only thing certain about the confrontation from here on is that there is going to be a lot of hypocrisy and doublespeak from all participants. This therefore is the moment to grab some basics to help cut through the coming posture-striking and rhetoric.
The key is the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a short document, just over 2,200 words long which, on July 1, 1968, was signed simultaneously in London, Moscow and Washington. Unfortunately from the outset the very name of the treaty which cast the focus on non-proliferation, disguised the key Article VI, which committed the signatories not only to quit the nuclear arms race but to work toward total nuclear disarmament. Under subsequent treaties, including START, Moscow and Washington have indeed stopped producing fissile material — of which they have more than enough already — and begun dismantling nuclear weapons — but largely from among the oldest parts of their arsenal. Now in defiance of Article VI, Washington is proposing to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and it must be reckoned that Moscow is planning the same.
Washington pretends to remain dedicated to stopping other states from acquiring these weapons. Hence the strong-arming of Libya and the present confrontation with Iran. Yet whether or not it was conveniently stolen by Mossad spies or handed-over surreptitiously, key US nuclear technology and probably fissile material as well, found it way to Israel and to its ultrasecret Dimona center. As a result, though constantly denied by Tel Aviv, Israel is a nuclear power, which refuses to sign the NPT and yet is a pivotal US ally in the Middle East.
If Tehran is indeed intent upon arming itself with nuclear weapons, it can have two good reasons. The first is that the US hypocritically countenances Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The second is that as North Korea has demonstrated, once a country has a bomb of its own, it reaches a plateau of safety because it is treated with caution, if not respect. If it can later offer economic or strategic trade-offs as with India and Pakistan, a new nuclear state can even be welcomed at the top table of world affairs.
The Arab world does not want nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Yet Washington’s refusal to call on Israel to disarm makes its protestations about Iran’s still only possible nuclear program, both hollow and vapid. They also give rise to the more disturbing consideration that the Americans, and maybe the Russians also, do not really want to stop nuclear proliferation. The existence of other nuclear arsenals gives them the excuse to hang on to their own, as a post-Cold War deterrent. The calculation in the US may be that as long as its delivery technology and anti-missile defenses remain pre-eminent, so its dominance is assured.
