{"id":72523,"date":"2025-06-20T01:57:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T16:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jun\/19\/nuclear-non-proliferation-is-a-failure-in-the-middle-east"},"modified":"2025-06-20T01:57:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T16:57:49","slug":"nuclear-non-proliferation-is-a-failure-in-the-middle-east-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=72523","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear non-proliferation is a failure in the Middle East | Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Unless Israel is open about its nuclear weapons and joins the non-proliferation treaty, Iran will one day have the bomb, writes <strong>Corrado Pirzio-Biroli<\/strong>. Plus, letters by <strong>Hubert Cassel, Dr Anthony Isaacs <\/strong>and<strong> Randhir Singh Bains<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I agree with Simon Tisdall\u2019s opinion (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/jun\/15\/trump-netanyahu-khamenei-three-angry-old-men\">Trump, Netanyahu and Khamenei, three angry old men who could get us all killed, 15&nbsp;June<\/a>). The reckless decisions of these leaders did not take place in a vacuum. As Tisdall writes: \u201cThe roots of major conflicts often reach back decades \u2013 and this is true of the Israel-Iran vendetta, which dates to the 1979 Islamic revolution.\u201d I suggest reaching further back to the 1950s, when Israel built its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2014\/jan\/15\/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal\">nuclear facility in Dimona<\/a> and Charles De Gaulle decided to end French support unless Israel joined the non\u2011proliferation treaty (NPT).<\/p>\n<p>After John F Kennedy\u2019s ultimatum for safeguards, Israel accepted six inspections, until Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger condoned its nuclear status outside the NPT, provided Israel maintained nuclear ambiguity, playing down its strategic advantage. Israel concealed its nuclear status, refused to adhere to the NPT as contrary to its national security interest, and adopted the \u201cBegin doctrine\u201d of counter-proliferation, envisaging preventive strikes against Middle Eastern countries installing nuclear reactors that might produce nuclear weapons. Accordingly, it destroyed Iraq\u2019s and Syria\u2019s nuclear reactors (in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/1981\/jun\/09\/israel.iraq\">1981<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/mar\/21\/israel-admits-it-carried-out-2007-airstrike-on-syrian-nuclear-reactor\">2007<\/a> respectively) and, in cooperation with the US, damaged&nbsp;the Iranian nuclear facilities with the Stuxnet malware (which leaked and spread).<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jun\/19\/nuclear-non-proliferation-is-a-failure-in-the-middle-east\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unless Israel is open about its nuclear weapons and joins the non-proliferation treaty, Iran will one day have the bomb, writes Corrado Pirzio-Biroli. Plus, letters by Hubert Cassel, Dr Anthony Isaacs and Randhir Singh BainsI agree with Simon Tisdall\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[596,1247,415,448,405,1005,212,3347,40,441,3349,3348,1014,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-benjamin-netanyahu","category-donald-trump","category-iran","category-iraq","category-israel","category-middle-east-and-north-africa","category-non-proliferation-treaty-npt","category-north-korea","category-nuclear-weapons","category-saddam-hussein","category-stuxnet","category-syria","category-us-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72525,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72523\/revisions\/72525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}