Mohamed ElBaradei , the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) chief, claimed today that up to 30 more states may go nuclear in the near future unless the non-proliferation regime is massively revamped:
Mr ElBaradei told a conference at the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna that 20 to 30 countries “have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons in a very short timespan”. “We are dealing with almost, as I call them, virtual nuclear weapons states,” he said.
He said the lack of international security, and the failure of existing nuclear-armed states to dismantle their own arsenals, made it hard to persuade other countries not to work on nuclear programmes.“Unfortunately, the political environment is not a very secure one… there are a lot of temptations (to develop nuclear weapons),” he said.
I hate to be the pessimist with the no-solution approach to this topic, but I can easily see where ElBaradei is coming from despite his aversion to name specifics. Iran’s nuclear advances are already sending tremors through the Middle East, something that the chaos in Iraq strongly reinforces. Saudi Arabia, which has had its own issues with Iran in the past (see the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing), will not be averse to going ahead with its own nuclear program if Iran’s influence continues to grow across the Fertile Crescent and bridges the Islamic Republic with the Shi’ite militant strongholds of the Levant.
Egypt is another concern despite being entirely committed to non-proliferation in the Middle East and Africa over the last decade or so. A resurgent Islamic Republic offers itself as a model for Islamic radicals the Middle East over, and nowhere is that more damaging than in a secular Egypt where the the wildly popular Muslim Brotherhood is barred from full electoral participation. Hizbollah’s skirmishes with Israel over the summer proved that anti-Zionist, anti-American sentiment is real in Egypt and is a powerful civil and political force, something a strengthened Iran reinforces through its own actions as well as through those of its proxy forces. Regardless, Egypt’s clout in the region remains strong and Iran, if it wishes to be the leading player in the Middle East, will eventually have to confront Egypitan power – and both Iranian and Egyptian officials are well aware of that fact. Perhaps recently announced Iran/Sudanese cooperation, including nuclear technology transfers, is a first step toward containing an Egyptian threat to the Islamic Republic’s new Middle Eastern order?
A nuclear Iran would force that country’s rivals in the region to re-consider their own nuclear status, in turn leading to a potential domino effect of disastrous proportions. The current situation in East Asia is similarly ponderous from a proliferation standpoint. While South Korea and Japan, especially, remain constrained by the American defense umbrella, there’s no guarantee that will always be the case if North Korea continues to act in wildly sporadic ways.
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