Today, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) stands totally destroyed after the Israeli and US attacks on Iran’s IAEA safeguarded peaceful nuclear facilities.
With this, the nuclear nonproliferation regime has also become irrelevant. All this has not happened suddenly, but the NPT has been the major cause of the regime’s gradual irrelevancy. To understand why this has happened one needs to understand the faulty nature of the NPT itself and how it was bound to unravel despite many states still remaining signatories to it.
The NPT was negotiated during the 1960s, opened for signatures in July 1968 and came into force in March 1970. From the start, it was controversial because it was discriminatory and targeted primarily developing states who would be seeking external help from the developed world, which already had nuclear power programmes and from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had been established in 1957.
The NPT was also a static treaty in that it only recognised those states as nuclear weapons states which had “manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967” (Article IX). Effectively, it only gave legitimacy to the nuclear weapons of the US (1945), Russia (1949), UK (1952), France (1960) and China (1964). As if that was not enough in-built discrimination, while all the other articles of the treaty were binding, Article VI was merely a ‘good faith’ provision for states to pursue nuclear disarmament.
Articles I and II bind nuclear weapon states not to transfer or assist in the development of nuclear weapons or explosive devices to non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) and bind NNWS not to receive such transfers of technology. Again, the restriction is on those developing states who need technology imports, while countries like Japan, Germany, to name two, kept developing their civil nuclear programmes to a stage where they could acquire nuclear weapons immediately. Japan developed the world’s most extensive fast breeder programme.
Article III also relates to safeguard agreements for civilian reactors of non-nuclear weapon states, while Article IV talks of the “inalienable right” of all states to develop civil nuclear energy and of “Parties to the Treaty” to help signatory states to develop their civil nuclear fuel cycles, including through technology transfers. Article IV has effectively remained dormant, as has Article V, which requires sharing of the benefits of peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) with NNWS.
The biased nature of this treaty was always going to be a source of weakness, but countries like Iran and Iraq signed on to it when it opened for signatures. North Korea also became a party to it. Pakistan and India did not, although Pakistan seemed to be prepared to give up its nuclear option if India did the same, judging by the statements that were given out officially at that time.
However, what began the destruction of the NPT were the actions of the nuclear weapons states. We saw the US and France clandestinely help Israel build its nuclear weapons programme, and in 1974, when India did its first nuclear test (claiming it to be a PNE), it suffered no punitive actions internationally. Interestingly, some countries declared that India had a right to ‘self-defence’ – similar to what the EU states are now saying about Israel. In fact, Pakistan was targeted instead with Canada withdrawing assistance for the IAEA-safeguarded CANDU research reactor. Thus, the signaling went out that once a country actually does a nuclear test, indicating its move to acquiring nuclear weapons, then the international community will not target that state but will focus on the next ‘domino’ that could fall.
The first country that was targeted was Iraq, when in June 1981, Israel bombed its IAEA-safeguarded Osirak reactor – a reactor that was also under French oversight. Again, no action by the international community was taken against this illegal action by Israel against a NPT member state.
Post-Iraq, Pakistan came under increasing pressure from Western states on its alleged covert nuclear capability. Many of us advocated that Pakistan should test a nuclear device, but Pakistan felt that ambiguity on the nuclear capability was a more feasible option. Then we had the nuclear tests by India in May 1998 and Pakistan saw clearly how no punitive actions were taken against India.
The debate within Pakistan was intense, but in the end, Pakistan carried out its nuclear tests also in May 1998 and both Pakistan and India became de facto nuclear weapons states. No international treaties had been violated by either country.
The US meanwhile kept trying to attempt the delinking of India’s nuclear programme from Pakistan’s and many Western analysts suddenly decided to give a religious colour to Pakistan’s nuclear bomb by referring to it as an Islamic bomb but no one referred to India’s as a Hindu bomb or US, UK and French bombs as Christian bombs.
The message was clear – Muslim states nuclear programmes were to be discriminated against. However, international focus had shifted to North Korea, which withdrew from the NPT in 2003 with a clear intent of conducting nuclear tests. It did so first in 2006 and continued to carry out nuclear tests in 2009, 2013, 2016 and 2017. There was no military action taken against North Korea either before its tests or after. The few punitive measures taken gradually faded out.
Once again, the US and its allies focused on another Muslim state's nuclear programme – Iran, a signatory to the NPT with its nuclear installations subject to IAEA safeguards since 1974. It had a rocky relationship with the IAEA after the Revolution in 1979 but in 2003 it gave the IAEA extended access and was forced to sign an Additional Safeguards Protocol which was totally unwarranted and highly discriminatory. So, it was not surprising that it stopped implementing this Protocol. However, in 2015 the Iran nuclear deal was signed (JCPOA) with the 5 UNSC permanent members plus Germany together with the EU. That was destroyed by Trump removing the US from it during his first presidential term.
Meanwhile, the US had moved for a nuclear cooperation agreement with India in 2005, which was signed in October 2008 (123 Agreement) in complete violation of Articles I and II of the NPT. The US got India a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (a Supplier cartel – NSG), so other states, including Russia, France, UK, Japan, Canada and Australia, also signed nuclear cooperation agreements with India in complete violation of their commitments under the NPT.
Effectively, the NPT had become almost totally redundant by this time, so no one paid much heed to any of its articles or any international legal provisions for the safety of safeguarded nuclear facilities. So, it hardly came as a surprise that in 2007, Israel attacked an alleged research reactor in Syria – Al Kibar.
Now, Israel and the US targeting Iran’s IAEA-safeguarded facilities have finally put an end to the farce that the NPT and the nonproliferation regime have become. The message is clear: If a state acquires nuclear weapons, it is safe; but if it continues to abide by its NPT and IAEA commitments, then it will suffer similar consequences to what Iraq, Syria and now Iran have suffered. Muslim states should especially take note.
The writer is a defence analyst and former minister for human rights in the PTI government. Twitter/X: ShireenMazari1