A nuclear-free Middle East

THE Arab initiative to hold a conference in Helsinki to debate the possibility of a nuclear-free Middle East can ameliorate the security dilemma in the region. If Iran manages to get away with its nuclear program and eventually become nuclear, then an arm race will ensue — a possibility that can destabilize the region and trigger inadvertent wars.
Rather than accentuating the security dilemma, the region needs to defuse tension and work out a regional plan to make war less likely. For this reason, the Obama administration supports the Arab initiative to hole the conference.
Ironically, it was Israel who trashed the idea from the get-go. Israeli leaders have been warning of the Iranian attempts to go nuclear. To all Israeli leaders, a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to Israel. Their threats to launch a preemptive attack to scuttle the Iranian nuclear program are well known and documented. If this is the case, many ponder as why Israel refuses such a conference!
Shaul Horev, director of the Israeli Nuclear Energy Committee, brushed a side the idea because it is “alien” to the region. At the fifty-sixth general convention of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Horev said that such an idea is not practical because of the volatile and hostile environment in the region. “In order to realize this idea there is a need for prior conditions and a complete reversal of the current trend in the area… This is an idea born in other areas and alien to the reality and political culture of the area. Nuclear demilitarization in the Middle East, according to the Israeli position, will be possible only after the establishment of peace and trust among the states of the area, as a result of a local initiative, not of external coercion.” Horev told Haaretz.
While many people in the region and some governments agree with Israel that a nuclear Iran will most likely feel emboldened to destabilize the region, they are also concerned with the fact that Israel is a nuclear state. It is for this reason that Israel leaders rejected all attempt to discuss its nuclear situation. Many make the case that Israel’s strategy is designed to keep its monopoly over nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Iranian leaders understand Israel’s motivation and hence their ultimate objective is to put an end to this monopoly.
Not surprisingly, Iran is creating a hollow impression that it seeks peaceful nuclear energy and that it does not intend to go nuclear. And yet, its technical ability to continue with uranium enrichment irks the international community. For Iran to go nuclear in this case is a matter of a political decision. Given the amount of distrust and strategic misleading in the region, it seems that only a few in our region buy into the Iranian arguments. Therefore, the impression is that Iran will continue negotiating in bad faith.
Unquestionably, a nuclear Iran will trigger a disastrous arm race in the region. Other key regional players will find it hard to accept being left behind Israel and Iran and they may go nuclear accordingly. While Israel’s argument that the dominant conditions in the region prevent the transformation of the Middle East into a nuclear-free zone is accurate, one should ask about the role of Israel in producing these conditions in the first place.
In fact, Israel policies toward the peace process have been detrimental to the stability of the region. Israel could have behaved differently and helped the region in realizing peace if it had accepted the Arab Peace Initiative. Rather than meeting the Arabs half way, Israel resorted to unilateralism as if there was no unified Arab plan to realize peace and security. The chronic impasse in the peace process led people to lose faith in the process altogether. It is here where Iran stepped in to maximize its influence and to hold more bargaining chips.
It is not as if the Middle East is a stable and peaceful region and that it is only Iran who acts as a revisionist state. To advance its sectarian interests in the region in away that enables Iran to be dominant, Iran has been using Israel’s damaging policies to win the hearts and minds of many Arabs. In brief, Israel needs to understand that the battle in the Middle East over minds and hearts entails a shift in its foreign policy toward the Palestinians. Indeed, the slogan “Might is Right” may have outlived its usefulness in a region that is undergoing sweeping changes.