When all is said and done, the recently-approved Iran nuclear agreement is all about ensuring that Iran honors its commitment not to develop nuclear weapons under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But the NPT, which was ratified in 1968 and which went into force in 1970, has two kinds of provisions. The first is that non-nuclear powers renounce developing a nuclear weapons capability. The second is that nuclear-armed nations divest themselves of their nuclear weapons.
Article VI of the treaty is explicit on this second point: “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 and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
What is the record of nuclear powers when it comes to compliance with the NPT? The good news is that there has been some compliance. Thanks to a variety of nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements negotiated among the major nuclear powers, plus some unilateral action, the world’s total nuclear weapons stockpile has been reduced by more than two-thirds.
On the other hand, forty-five years after the NPT went into effect, nine nations continue to cling to about sixteen thousand nuclear weapons, thousands of which remain on hair-trigger alert. These nations include not only the US and Russia (which together possess more than ninety percent of them), but Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
Equally dangerous from the standpoint of the future is that these nations have recently abandoned negotiating incremental nuclear disarmament agreements and have plunged instead into programs of nuclear weapons “modernization.” In the US, modernization — projected to cost $1 trillion over the next thirty years — will include everything from ballistic missiles, bombers, and warheads to naval vessels, Cruise missiles and nuclear weapons factories.
Thus, despite the nuclear powers’ insistence that Iran comply with the NPT, it is pretty clear that these nuclear-armed countries do not consider themselves bound to comply with this landmark agreement, signed by a hundred and eighty-nine nations.
In the aftermath of the Iranian government’s agreement to comply with the treaty, would it not be an appropriate time to demand that the nuclear-armed nations do so? At the least, the nuclear nations should agree to halt nuclear weapons “modernization” and to begin negotiating the long-delayed treaty to scrap the sixteen thousand nuclear weapons remaining in their arsenals.