Israel and other countries that have nuclear weapons should be subjected to disarmament in light of Iran's agreement with the world powers to curb its nuclear program, wrote Iranian Foreign Minster Mohammad Javad Zarif in an article for the The Guardian Friday.
Zarif asserted that his country and others that did not have the destructive weapons have indeed “walked the walk” toward a safer world.
Time to start negotiations for a nuclear weapons elimination treaty, with robust monitoring mechanism: http://t.co/Ou3EoqDfVq
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif)
July 31, 201
“Meanwhile, states actually possessing these destructive weapons have hardly even ‘talked the talk,’ while completely brushing off their disarmament obligations under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and customary international law,” he added.
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The skilled foreign minister said that it was an ironic that Israel, as the only country in the Middle East region with a nuclear stockpile, was one of the few countries in the world that refused to endorse the Iran deal and in fact lobbies to undermine it or make it fail.
“That is to say nothing of countries outside the NPT, or Israel, with an undeclared nuclear arsenal and a declared disdain towards non-proliferation, notwithstanding its absurd and alarmist campaign against the Iranian nuclear deal,” wrote Zarif.
He also argued that the mutually assured destruction foreign policy adopted after the end of the Cold War has become “intolerable.” “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 stated.
Zarif added, “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.”
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In 1986, at the peak of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the world had more than 68,000 nuclear warheads. While the nuclear countries scaled down on their capabilities, the process of disarmament had reached a stalemate and the world now has at least 16,000 warheads, with the U.S. and Russia having at least 8,000 warheads each.
Iran and the world powers signed a historic deal this month tha t would demand that Tehran keeps its nuclear program a civilian one in exchange for the immediate and complete termination of decades-long sanctions against the country.
Empowered by his country's breakthrough deal, the senior diplomat also said that his country, as the current chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of 120 countries that are not aligned or opposed to any world power bloc, would be willing to work with the international community in order to achieve a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons despite the difficulties along the way.
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“It is imperative that we change this dangerous and erroneous security paradigm and move toward a better, safer and fairer arrangement,” wrote Zarif. “I sincerely believe that the nuclear agreement between my country – a non-nuclear-weapon state – and the P5+1 (which control almost all nuclear warheads on Earth) is symbolically significant enough to kickstart this paradigm shift and mark the beginning of a new era for the non-proliferation regime.”