Iran Deal Iran's foreign minister: Israel should disarm, too

Now that Iran has agreed to curb its nuclear program, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif says it’s time for Israel to follow suit and abandon its long-rumored nuclear arsenal.

“Iran’s push for a ban on weapons of mass destruction in its regional neighbourhood has been consistent,” Zarif wrote in an editorial for the Guardian. “And while Iran has received the support of some of its Arab friends in this endeavour, Israel — home to the Middle East’s only nuclear weapons programme — has been the holdout.”


The nuclear deal signed in Vienna by Iran and the P 5 + 1 countries earlier this month, which dismantles much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and allows for an inspections regime to monitor the Islamic republic’s compliance, should be “symbolically significant enough to kickstart [a] paradigm shift,” Zarif said.

“Today, in light of the Vienna deal, it is high time that the nuclear ‘haves’ remedied the gap by adopting serious disarmament measures and reinforcing the non-proliferation regime,” Iran’s top diplomat added, referring to the Non-Proliferation Treaty which established a framework for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in 1970.

The NPT recognizes only the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia as nuclear armed states, though in the decades since its signing Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea have all reportedly conducted successful nuclear tests.

Israel’s government has never publicly admitted to possessing a nuclear weapon, even though most analysts believe the country developed nuclear technology in the 1960s and now has a significant number of nuclear warheads.

Zarif denounced Israel’s “absurd and alarmist campaign against the Iranian nuclear deal” despite of the country’s “undeclared nuclear arsenal and a declared disdain towards non-proliferation.”

He added that in a “globalised security environment” the “cold war era asymmetry between states that possess nuclear weapons and those that don’t is no longer remotely tolerable. For too long, it has been assumed that the insane concept of mutually assured destruction would sustain stability and non-proliferation. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

He suggested “start[ing] negotiations for a weapons elimination treaty, backed by a robust monitoring and compliance-verification mechanism.” Eventually, Zarif wrote, the goal should be to “establish a WMD-free zone in the Middle East.”

Though President Barack Obama has asserted that the Vienna deal will keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, to date he has not attempted to leverage the deal into larger plans for disarmament. A majority of Republicans in Congress and on the 2016 campaign trail have come out against the deal, saying that they do not believe it will ultimately keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and its failure will result in a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

In order to scuttle the deal, Republicans will need to muster enough Democrats to override a presidential veto of any legislation disapproving of the accord. With that in mind, the Obama administration has been lobbying Democrats to support the deal, with Obama making a direct and personal appeal to members of his own party.

In Israel, both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief political rival, opposition leader Isaac Herzog, have come out against the deal.

Netanyahu has called the agreement a “historic mistake,” not only because he does not believe that in the long-term it will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but also because the sanctions relief for Iran included in the deal will allow the country to continue to finance terrorist organizations around the Middle East.

On Thursday, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Netanyahu said that the tide is turning and more and more Americans are coming out against the deal.

“This is true about the American public,” the Israeli leader added. “The debate in the U.S. is important, and you can see the shift.”