Can the “breakthrough agreement” reached between Iran and P5+1 group of nations led by America herald lasting peace in the Middle-East and make the world “safer and more secure?”
US President Barack Obama believes the “deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction,” which the world must seize. Many are however of the opinion that Iran’s fairly robust nuclear weapons-making infrastructure will remain untouched by this quid-pro-quo arrangement, even though it pegs the country’s uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent, insufficient for weaponization.
Notwithstanding Tehran’s integration into global mainstream, the deal might not be enough to make the Middle-East a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
President Obama rightly noted in 2012 that the “dangers of an Iran getting nuclear weapons that leads to a free-for-all in the Middle East” will be nothing but a catastrophe so far as regional peace and stability is concerned. Indeed, the Iranian drive to obtain a nuclear bomb has stimulated a regional race for obtaining nuclear technology to counter the perceived threat, with at least 12 countries either announcing plans to explore atomic energy or signing nuclear cooperation agreements with nuclear supplier countries.
But then, every nation has the right to exploit nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. And when Washington and its allies in the western world remains mum on Israel developing nuclear arsenal surreptitiously, why blame the Arab countries for their zeal to join the nuclear club in order to preserve respective sovereignty?
Tel Aviv, having already developed 200-300 nuclear warheads, with additional capacity to produce more at short notice, has a much bigger arsenal than some of the recognized nuclear weapons states.
Intriguingly, there seems to be a deliberate reluctance on the part of international community to condemn Israel’s nuclear malfeasance. If Tehran can be persuaded to convert its underground nuclear infrastructure in Fordow into a research facility where Iranian and global scientists will work side by side, what stops the Western diplomatic establishment from forcing Tel Aviv to open up its secretive nuclear installation in Dimona, operating outside the purview of international inspection safeguards?
Is it not an open secret that Israel is the only state in this volatile region that has produced separated plutonium and even highly enriched uranium, both key ingredients for thermonuclear weapons production?
A strategic security expert, with thorough knowledge of Israel’s non-civilian nuclear capability, once told this author “the West has discreetly acknowledged the contention of the Jews that an ethnocratic Israel, situated right in the middle of the Arab world, faces an existential threat from the Arabs and hence have invested a lot on making the Jewish state militarily powerful.”
And none other than US Secretary of State John Kerry corroborated the expert’s flawless assessment about the false sense of insecurity to which Israelis in general and diaspora Jews are prone. While addressing the Saban Forum at Brookings Institution in the fall season of 2013, Kerry unambiguously disclosed America’s longstanding belief that Israel has to be strong to make peace with the Arab world, the reason why Washington pampered Tel Aviv limitlessly. But it is time that the world recognizes the need for enforcing a WMD-free zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle-East as the region has turned into a hotbed of proliferation concern.
Now that the leadership of nations suspected of pursuing clandestine WMD programs in the Middle-East have shown willingness to resolve regional and international anxieties, it is high time to restart serious negotiations for creating a WMDFZ in the Middle-East, as proposed by Egypt in 1990.
And now when new developments on the governance of such destructive weapons in the region has started unfolding, there is a possibility of having a productive dialogue along the lines suggested by an international panel of nuclear experts on fissile material, working with Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.
In a thought-provoking report, they called for introduction of collective restraint vis-à-vis fissile material production and usage so as to foster trust among the regional leadership, who in turn can acquire stake in the functioning and expansion of each other’s nuclear programs in the larger interest of the Arab world. And the report rightly emphasizes the necessity of Israel taking appropriate initiatives to demonstrate that it is seriously interested in a regional WMDFZ apart from encouraging the formation of a parallel regional verification system, strong enough to provide confidence to the stakeholders about the absence of surreptitious nuclear, chemical and biological weapons development program in Middle-East.
Since, peace is ultimately a “competition between despair and hope,” the Arab leadership can surely usher a new dawn by shedding all hesitancy.
And with India’s Narendra Modi-government setting its eyes on Middle-East, New Delhi can hasten WMD-disarmament in West Asia, in accordance with the late Saudi King Abdullah’s vision, by exploiting the Non-Aligned Movement forum adequately.
