Shielding Israel’s Secret Nukes

A glaring case of hypocrisy is that the U.S. government berates Iran for a non-weaponized nuclear program while fighting to protect Israel’s large, sophisticated and undeclared nuclear arsenal, a double standard that led the Obama administration to oppose a nuclear-free Mideast, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes.

By Paul R. Pillar

The stated rationale for the United States casting last Tuesday one of the very lonely votes it sometimes casts at the United Nations General Assembly, on matters on which almost the entire world sees things differently, warrants some reflection.

The resolution in question this time endorsed the creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East and called on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to renounce any possession of nuclear weapons, and to put its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations in 2012, drawing his own "red line" on how far he will let Iran go in refining nuclear fuel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations in 2012, drawing his own “red line” on how far he will let Iran go in refining nuclear fuel.

A nuclear weapons-free Middle East and universal adherence to the nonproliferation treaty are supposedly U.S. policy objectives, and have been for many years. So why did the United States oppose the resolution? According to the U.S. representative’s statement in earlier debate, the resolution “fails to meet the fundamental tests of fairness and balance. It confines itself to expressions of concern about the activities of a single country.”

You know something doesn’t wash when the contrary views are as overwhelmingly held as on this matter. The resolution passed on a vote of 161-5. Joining Israel and the United States as “no” votes were Canada (maybe the Harper government was thinking of the Keystone XL pipeline issue being in the balance?) and the Pacific powers of Micronesia and Palau. The latter two habitually cast their UN votes to stay in the good graces of the United States; they have been among the few abstainers on the even more lopsided votes in the General Assembly each year calling for an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

An obvious problem with the United States complaining about a resolution on a topic such as this being an expression of concern about the activities of only a single country is that the United States has been in front in pushing for United Nations resolutions about the nuclear activities of a single country, only just not about the particular country involved this time.

The inconsistency is glaring. Iran has been the single-country focus of several U.S.-backed resolutions on nuclear matters, resolutions in the Security Council that have been the basis for international sanctions against Iran.

One could look, but would look in vain, for sound rationales for the inconsistency. If anything, the differences one would find should point U.S. policy in the opposite direction from the direction it has taken. It is Iran that has placed itself under the obligations of the nonproliferation treaty and subjects its nuclear activities to international inspection.

Since the preliminary agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program that was negotiated last year, those inspections are more frequent and intrusive than ever. Israel, by contrast, has kept its nuclear activities completely out of the reach of any international inspection or control regime. As for actual nuclear weapons, Iran does not have them, has declared its intention not to have them, and according to the U.S. intelligence community has not made any decision to make them.

Neither Israel nor the United States says publicly that Israel has nuclear weapons, but just about everyone else in the world takes it as a given that it does, which would make it the only state in the Middle East that does.

One might look, but still in vain, for justifying discrepancies that go beyond the respective nuclear programs of the countries in question but still involve questions of regional security and stability. What about, for example, menacing threats? Iran and Israel have each had plenty of unfriendly words about each other. Iran’s words have included bloviation about wiping something from pages of history; Israel’s have included more pointed threats of military attack.

What about actual attacks? Israel has initiated multiple wars with its neighbors, as well as launching smaller armed attacks; The Islamic Republic of Iran has not started a war in its 35-year history. Terrorism? Well, there were those assassinations of Iranian scientists, with some later attacks against Israelis being an obvious (and not very successful) attempt by Iran at a tit-for-tat response against those responsible for murdering the scientists. And so forth.

Singling out one country in a multilateral context can indeed cause problems. The resolution the General Assembly passed this week need not involve a problem, however, since it was not calling for differential treatment of anyone, only for Israel to get with the same program as any state in the Middle East that does not have nukes and adheres to the international nuclear control regime.

Iran, by contrast, is being treated much differently from anyone else. Tehran already has acquiesced to some of that differential treatment, but Iranians unsurprisingly wonder why Iran should be subjected to more such treatment, or indeed to any of it. They wonder, for example, why Iran should be subject to unique restrictions that several other non-nuclear-weapons states that also are parties to the nonproliferation treaty and enrich their own uranium are not.

Such wonderment is almost certainly a factor in Iranian resistance to making the sorts of additional concessions that many in the United States are expecting or demanding that Iran make. The differential treatment should be kept in mind in any discussion in the United States about who has made bigger concessions than whom and about what would or would not constitute a fair and reasonable final agreement.

Then there is the irony, although Iranians might use a more bitter word than irony, of Israel leading the charge in constantly agitating about Iran’s nuclear program (and by trying to torpedo an international agreement to restrict that program, making the issue fester and thus making it more possible for Israel’s agitation to go on forever).

Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)

5 comments for “Shielding Israel’s Secret Nukes

  1. Abe
    December 13, 2014 at 04:26

    In a 2013 report published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists http://bos.sagepub.com/content/69/5/75.full.pdf, nuclear weapon proliferation experts Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen assess that Israel stopped producing nuclear warheads back in 2004 once it reached around 80 operative warheads.

    According to the US experts, Israel is equipping some of its submarines with nuclear-
    capable cruise missiles, and has produced fissile material sufficient for 115 to 190 warheads.

  2. T.Dunlop
    December 11, 2014 at 02:01

    Question:
    Isn’t Israel the lynchpin to US energy interest in the mideast? I’ve read that the world’s largest proven oil reserves (non bitumen) are within a 500 mile radius of Israel. If true, that’s why Israel is “allowed” nuclear weapons…?

    • Abe
      December 13, 2014 at 04:16

      Ariel Sharon, an outspoken proponent of “Greater Israel”, is quoted as saying, “Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches.”

  3. Abe
    December 8, 2014 at 23:51

    The guiding principle for Israel is its self-projection as victims of Arab vandalism, which is most frequently, albeit allegedly, expressed as Arab’s blatant refusal to acknowledge the state of Israel’s right to exist. That the Arabs are violent and often attack Israeli cities is the pretext the state of Israel often uses to justify and legitimize bombing of Palestinian areas. However, the reality is that the state of Israel persistently invents such pretexts to advance its own position in the entire Palestinian area in particular, and in the Middle East in general. By adopting an offensive policy, Israel attempts to seek uncontested hegemony not only against Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, but also against its rival regional states such as Iran. It is for this reason that the use of force, both military and non-military, has become one of the most prominent ways, which Israel has adopted over the years, of communicating with its rivals.

    Israel: In Quest for Uncontested Hegemony
    Salman Rafi Sheikh
    http://journal-neo.org/2014/12/09/israel-in-quest-for-uncontested-hegemony/

  4. JWalters
    December 8, 2014 at 19:54

    A good accounting of the irrationalities in the U.S. policy. These irrationalities make one wonder if there is some other factor moving events, something not on the public radar, some hidden agenda. Perhaps somebody with a lot of financial power actually wants war, e.g. “War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror”.
    http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

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