Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Nuclear Weapons, the US and Iran

I should start this post by making it clear that I would prefer it if no nations had nuclear weapons. I know I'm not the only person who feels this way. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
is an international treaty designed with this in mind. It has a specific reference to this aim.

Article VI
Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

This was written during the Cold War which is why it refers to the nuclear arms race. As you can see it also refers to "nuclear disarmament" as a principle of the treaty. This treaty is still valid and the US is currently one of the many nations who agree to abide by it's rules.

Today on the New York Times website I noticed this story:
Reshaping Nuclear Pact: Bush Seeks to Close Loopholes
(Register for free to see the full story. NYT draws level with Washington Post, see this.)

I wondered if the loophole being closed was the one where the US, as a signatory to the treaty, is committed to nuclear disarmament but it turns out that this is not the case. In fact it is a story about Iran using a loophole in the treaty to continue to work on peaceful nuclear power projects which can then, at a later date, be developed into a nuclear weapons programme. I previously posted a link to a report from Aljazeera.com on this subject entitled U.S. panel faults intelligence on Iran’s nuclear weapons

I can't write a summary of this which I am satisfied with. The reader will have to draw their own conclusions.

Today's dictionary word is hypocrisy.
(From Cambridge Dictionaries Online.)

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