Iran FM urges ‘nuclear’ Israel, other states to disarm

In the wake of the nuclear deal signed last month between Iran and world powers, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on Israel and the world’s eight states with declared nuclear weapons to disarm.

In an op-ed in The Guardian, Zarif said: “The joint comprehensive plan of action, as the accord is officially known, cements Iran’s status as a zone free of nuclear weapons. Now it is high time that we expand that zone to encompass the entire Middle East.”

Zarif charged that Iran and other signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty have “actually done far more for the cause of non-proliferation in practice than nuclear-weapon states have done on paper.”

The Iranian FM also took a jab at the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, UK, France, Russia and China — all of whom have nuclear weapons and are signatories to the NPT, as well as nuclear-armed, non-NPT states India, Pakistan and North Korea.

These states, he said, “completely brush[…] off their disarmament obligations under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and customary international law.”

“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,” he wrote.

Israel, charged Zarif, has an “undeclared nuclear arsenal and a declared disdain towards non-proliferation” and has pursued an “absurd and alarmist campaign against the Iranian nuclear deal.”

Israel maintains nuclear ambiguity and has never confirmed it possesses nuclear weapons.

Zarif called for an arms elimination treaty “backed by a robust monitoring and compliance-verification mechanism” to “revive and complement the NPT.” In the initial phase, Zarif proposes, nuclear arsenals would be de-alerted, meaning warheads would be removed from missiles to “reduce risk of use.”

Such an agreement “would codify disarmament obligations for nuclear-armed regimes that are not party to the NPT – but that are nonetheless bound – politically, by the international non-proliferation regime and, legally, by preemptory norms of customary international law to disarm,” wrote Zarif.

A weapons elimination treaty is “certainly a feasible goal to start this global project with a robust, universal and really genuine push to establish a WMD-free zone in the Middle East, if the relevant powers finally come to deem it not just a noble cause but a strategic imperative,” he added.

Zarif argued that the Cold War-era doctrine of mutually assured destruction — which he calls an “insane concept” — was “no longer remotely tolerable,” having essentially failed to promote stability or lead to non-proliferation.

“The prevalence of this deterrence doctrine in international relations has been the primary driving force behind the temptation by some countries to acquire nuclear weapons, and by others to engage in expanding and beefing up the strength of their nuclear arsenals,” Zarif said.

After over a decade of tensions, Iran and the world powers signed a nuclear agreement on July 14 aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Israel has argued that the deal is deeply flawed and essentially leaves Iran, its main regional foe, a nuclear threshold state with an absurdly quick breakout capacity. Jerusalem has also charged that the billions of dollars that would flow into Iranian coffers following the lifting of sanctions would be invested in further funding of terrorism, regionally and worldwide.

Since the deal was signed, Iran has also openly challenged some of the provisions, arguing that it never agreed to inspections of military sites and vowing that international inspectors would be barred from visiting certain locations.

Israel is taking the battle against the deal to Congress, which is set to vote on the accord in September.