nuclear-news

Hypocrisy – the West and Israel hold nuclear weapons, but Iran should not?

Nuclear policy: hypocrisy and inevitability?, 4 News, 16 July 13

“…… the nuclear powers wrestle with their nuclear futures. As they do so, another nation, Iran, stands accused of seeking to join them. Stand in Tehran and consider that country’s security and it is an unenviable picture. Its neighbouring states of Afghanistan and Iraq deeply upheaved by western military intervention; nuclear Israel and her sophisticated military systems just two countries away; the entire Arab world destabilised by the Arab Spring – Saudi Arabia and Qatar just across the Persian Gulf.

Couple that with the Sunni/Shia tensions within Islam, and life for ostracised Iran might make even the UK generals and former defence secretaries think that a country in such a position might seek a nuclear deterrent. We still do not know for sure whether Iran seeks either the bomb itself, or the technology to build one. Indeed the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, recently repeated his belief that the possession of a nuclear bomb would be against the teachings of the Koran.

‘We can have a bomb, you can’t’

Threaded beneath these facts there lurks the whiff of international hypocrisy. “We can have a bomb – you can’t – because we say so,” doesn’t always wash, particularly when some of those who have the bomb refuse either to join or submit to the inspection of the NPT regime. Britain’s present bomb, indeed the US bomb, has never been subjected to the inspections to which Iran’s system has been subjected under the NPT. And no inspection of any kind has ever been permitted by Israel….. http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/nuclear-trident-policy-bomb-britain-military-defence/20769

July 18, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general