Wmd Arms Control in the Middle East: Prospects, Obstacles and Options by Harald Muller

Author:Harald Muller [Muller, Harald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Peace, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781134770441
Google: 2LOXCwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 29250644
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Challenges in the Middle East

The Middle East is plagued by suspicion, sectarian tensions, rivalry and hostility. Firstly, despite the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear programme, the level of trust between Israel and Iran is so low that the goal of establishing a complete WMDFZ in the Middle East can be likened to a fantasy. The Arab Spring highlighted some of these tensions and exacerbated regional instability. The changes in government in some countries and the instability in others have diverted the attention of policy makers towards domestic issues. In this context, the critical players in this region are not prepared to take the initial steps necessary to making a WMDFZ agreement possible first.

Israel is unwilling to take part in a process which is likely to single it out as the only nuclear state in the region requiring the dismantlement of its programme. Its fears are not unfounded. In fact, the more general Middle East WMDFZ (as opposed to just a nuclear-weapon-free zone) process was kicked off internationally in a document that did just that. The Resolution on the Middle East, adopted during the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), not only called for ‘the establishment of an effectively verifiable Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological, and their delivery systems’, but also for ‘all States of the Middle East that have not yet done so, without exception, to accede to the Treaty as soon as possible and to place their nuclear facilities under full scope International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards’ (NPT, 1995). This clearly pointed the finger at Israel. To add insult to injury, the 2010 NPT Review Conference repeated the encouragement for nuclear states to join the NPT and specifically mentioned Israel in the section on the Middle East (NPT, 2010, p. 29). Israel has made it clear that in its view a Middle East WMDFZ can only be achieved if the process originates and culminates in a regional process and begins by addressing tensions and conflicts in the Middle East (Chorev, 2012). Tel Aviv is adamant that its security concerns be addressed prior to any discussion of such a zone. In 2012, regional states did not agree to an agenda for the Helsinki conference that would allay Israel’s concerns. It is not surprising then, that Tel Aviv showed no interest in attending.

But Israel is not alone. Although Iran is one of the pioneers of the MEWMDFZ, co-sponsoring the idea with Egypt in 1974, it has shown reservations about the current process. Iran took exception to the idea of extending the nuclear-weapon-free zone to all WMD and their delivery systems in the 1995 Resolution, stating that the extension of the agenda had inevitably complicated the process and made the end goal more ‘elusive’ (Saghafi-Ameri, 2012). Even though unilateral Israeli disarmament is unlikely (if not impossible), Iran and the Arab states insist that a MEWMDFZ cannot be established until Israel signs the NPT and places its programme under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.