nuclear-news

More than any other state on earth, Iran is presently keeping her enemies on their toes – expertly.

Iran categorically and emphatically state to domestic and international audiences that they have no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons capability, and yet a significant amount of Western intelligence, including that by the peak UN body only yesterday, has contended for some time (to the chagrin of Tehran) that they do….

Now let’s assume Iran are unequivocally seeking nuclear weapons. Simply put, Iran is therefore adopting an opaque nuclear weapons policy, as have Israel since the 1960s.

There are, however, two basic differences: first, Israel has maintained an ambiguous nuclear weapons policy after having acquired weapons capability, whereas Iran is widely believed to have not (though some disagree – albeit sensationalistically); and second, Israel negotiated its present policy with the United States, and Iran foreseeably could never.

Put another way, Iran is under a greater level of scrutiny for ten years of nuclear weapons development than Israel has been for possessing them for over 40 years.

On what do I base this view? Well, disarmament is certainly not where the vast majority of the current research funds are going.

By my reckoning, of the several hundred security-related philanthropic and endowment foundations in the United States, Europe and Australia, more than 80 percent focus their energies on Iran, either through a targeted program or as part of congruent programs on so called “rogue states” or “nuclear terrorism”.

Few, if any, fund projects exploring the prospects for additional nuclear weapons free zones or other disarmament measures. This is despite all regional states – including Egypt, Israel and Iran – may have agreed on the importance of a denuclearised Middle East since the 1980s

None (that I could find) explicitly seek to fund programs that focus on existing Israeli nuclear weapons arsenals as a source of regional insecurity or singularly disarmament….

“Hello Israel, might we talk about your nukes?”, ..

Now the international community has indicated that it is losing patience, I have some small hope that Israel too may do the unexpected, and bring its nukes to the negotiating table. Israel has the trump card in this; may Iran and the Arabs respond in kind. Relations in the Middle East are tense enough without the need for WMD.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/this-blog-harms/2011/11/10/remember-tehrans-nuclear-ambiguity-was-learnt-from-israel/