Washington — An Obama administration official said Israel should sign on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gotemoeller told a meeting of the 189 signatories of the treaty that “universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea,” remains “a fundamental objective of the United States,” according to media reports. But she declined to say whether the administration would take any specific steps to press Israel to sign the document.
She reportedly declined to say, however, whether the Obama administration would press Israel to join the treaty. According to The Washington Times, a senior White House official said the administration considered the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran to be unrelated “apples and oranges.”
Asked by newspaper whether the administration would press Israel to join the NPT, the White House official said, “We support universal adherence to the NPT. [It] remains a long-term goal.”
Israel does not confirm or deny that it has nuclear weapons, but is widely thought to possess a substantial number of nuclear weapons.
The Washington Times reported that a push to get Israel to sign the NPT would jeopardize a 40-year-old secret agreement between the United States and the Jewish state to never acknowledge publicly Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The Times describes documents released in recent years that acknowledge an accord, forged at a summit between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, although there is no explicit record of the accord.
But a memo from then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger to Nixon, according to the newspaper, notes the existence of Israeli missiles topped with nuclear warheads and then states that “what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.”
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Haven't we seen the folly of disarmament treaties going back to the period before WWI that made it a contest for all to violate by innovation in arms and location? The past naval treaties, the German disarmament violation use of Soviet facilities and manufacturing, the failed North Korean arrangements, etc. have proven the futility of this mind-set. The only success has been the MAD arrangement vis-à-vis the USA and the USSR that kept each other from excesses.
The moral equivalence expounded by liberal establishments is a fool’s journey that can only lead to disaster. In all of the years of mortal threat to Israel, their so-called nuclear abilities were never invoked save for the time when the Russians threatened them. The failure of the West and the UN to contain the nuclear ambitions of Iran is another argument against imposing nuclear proliferation restraints on an endangered small country like Israel. Whatever you may think of Israel and its policies, they are a small country amidst hostile neighbors who will only settle the dispute with the disappearance of the Jewish state.
Iran removed a dictator, the Shah, and thought that they were getting a democratic and fair leadership. All they received was a more dangerous ideological dictator that evokes the worst of radical Islam that threatens all nonbelievers in the world, moderate-to-liberal Iranians, and moderate Arab neighbors.
Until and if the Messiah comes with self-evident era of friendship and peace, I will maintain the attitude of that great American President Teddy Roosevelt who said “Speak softly and carry a big stick.
Bernard Aronson Scottsdale, AZ