Juan Cole: Iran Calls for Nuclear Disarmament by US, Israel, World

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/29/iran-calls-nuclear-disarmament-us-israel-world

At a summit on Monday, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif turned the tables on the countries demanding that Iran keep its nuclear program for solely civilian, electricity generation. Zarif called for all countries to give up nuclear weapons, including Israel and the US. Iran does not have a nuclear bomb and gives no signs of trying to develop one.

The speech is a welcome reminder of how topsy-turvy Washington discourse on Iran is. Iran is viewed suspiciously as going for broke to get an atomic bomb, when there is no evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons program. That the US has a massive nuclear arsenal is not mentioned. That the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East is Israel is not mentioned. That George W. Bush was alarmed that an Israeli PM brandished the threat of a nuclear strike against Iraq is not mentioned. That Israel is not inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency but Iran is, is not mentioned. That Western countries have actively connived to give Israel a nuclear weapons capability and to improve it is not mentioned. So US politicians constantly warn that if Iran gets a bomb it will kick of a nuclear arms race in the region, ignoring the fact that Israel has a bomb, which has already driven such a race (it was why Iraq in the 1980s sought bomb-making capabilities).

Zarif spoke on behalf of the Group of the Non-Aligned States Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the 2015 NPT Review Conference in New York, saying that the NPT is the essential framework for the whole world and that a complete disarmament should be the end game. He said,

“The nuclear-weapon-States have not made progress in eliminating their nuclear weapons. The role of nuclear weapons in security policies of the nuclear-weapon-States has not diminished. Some nuclear weapons States are modernizing their nuclear arsenals and planning research on new nuclear warheads, others have announced their intention to develop new delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons.”

[malaise]

1. K & R

All nuclear weapons should be banned everywhere

[Wilms]

2. ^