ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to US congress this week and American President Barack Obama's announcement of a landmark deal with Iran have reawakened old animosities, and questions.
The issue here isn't whether or not Iran has nuclear weapons, we know they don't and we know that no matter what the rhetoric spouted is they are unlikely to do so in the near future. The issue is the hypocrisy within the international system regarding the acquisition and maintenance of nuclear weapons in general.
The five permanent members of the Security Council America, Russia, France Britain and China are all signatories to the treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), as is Iran for that matter. Israel, which has an outstanding if not just a little bit redundant policy of "deliberate ambiguity", is not. Neither are Pakistan and India, two other nuclear states, or North Korea which withdrew from the treaty, essentially showing how pointless the whole thing is.
The five original nuclear powers have long maintained an argument that they should be the only ones entrusted to possessing nuclear weapons as they are the only ones which can be trusted to maintain peace in the international system. The fact that the U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in an aggressive act seems lost on the current policy makers.
Iran voluntarily signed up to the NPT without any actual need to do so, and has remained with it despite an inability among other signatories to do so. Meanwhile Iran's greatest opponent, Israel, is known to have nuclear weapons and refuses to sign the NPT, they also refuse to allow independent inspection of non military nuclear facilities however that is an entirely different issue. Unlike the renowned realist academic Kenneth Waltz I do not believe that Iran getting a nuclear weapon would increase the stability of the Middle East, an argument being that it will create an element of mutually assured destruction, MAD, the same principle argued between Russia and the West during the Cold War. The fact is though that if stability is to be maintained within the international system there must be an equality of action and reaction between states, e.g. Israel cannot complain about one party developing nuclear weapons outside of international oversight when they are doing the exact same thing.
In the cases of Iran et al there is an additional issue of 'dual use' technology, the ability for a crossover of non-military nuclear applications, such as power generation. Germany, Japan and South Korea all have the capability from their nuclear energy industry to start a nuclear weapons program, they are known as 'recessed nuclear weapons states'. If we are to argue that Iran should not be allowed any nuclear capacity then does this mean that we are going to force these countries to dismantle their power stations?
A nuclear free world is a lovely idea but it won't happen. The genie is well and truly out of that bottle and no amount of good intention will shove it back in. The only alternative is to find a common ground. Global governance of the nuclear sector is a possible course, however, so long as countries such as Israel continue to develop nuclear weapons as refuse to acknowledge it this will not happen. At the end of the day only one thing can be done, treat each state equally, allow for trust within the system and pray that each state understands the consequences of its actions. Mutually assured destruction may be MAD but it is the only way to peace we have.
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