Word: israelism
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...Although it might have been missed amid the ritual posturing against Israel - versions of the same resolution have been presented annually for the past 19 years - the IAEA assembly passed a second resolution that couched the same objective in much more engaging language: a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) for the Middle East. Though the idea of a NWFZ for the region has been around since the 1970s, it has largely been the preserve of leftist groups like Greenpeace or a tool for pressuring Israel, the only Middle East nation believed to have nuclear weapons. But not only...
...Israel has long maintained a policy of "strategic ambiguity" about its nuclear-weapons capability, hinting that it can deter any aggression with overwhelming force, but without inviting the international scrutiny of a fully declared program - or sparking a regional arms race. That position went largely unchallenged for some three decades. But in 2003, the IAEA accused Iran, which had started a civilian nuclear-energy program during the reign of the U.S.-backed Shah, of falling short of NPT transparency requirements. Although the IAEA has never accused Iran of trying to build a bomb, intelligence agencies in Israel and the West...
...standoff, there's little optimism over the prospects for a compromise. The U.S. and European powers are demanding that Iran forgo its right to enrich uranium even for energy purposes in exchange for a series of economic and diplomatic rewards, but Tehran has ruled out renouncing that right. And Israel has repeatedly warned that if the diplomatic outreach fails, it is prepared to resort to military action to stop Iran's nuclear development. (See an interview with nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei...
...negotiations to include the principle of a NWFZ for the Middle East could break the deadlock. Under a treaty sponsored by the IAEA, permanent inspectors and surveillance technologies could be installed in the current or future civilian nuclear-development programs of all 22 of the Arab League nations, plus Israel and Iran, backed by the threat of immediate sanctions and possible military action for any breaches of the agreement not to build weapons. This would allow Iran to save face and maintain its ostensibly civilian nuclear program and, in exchange for the decommissioning of Israeli weapons, reassure the rest...
...NWFZ would be a harder sell in Israel, where the government has previously refused to discuss the issue until hostile Arab and Muslim nations recognize the Jewish state's right to exist. The new IAEA resolution that Israel nominally supported calls for the use of dialogue to achieve the end of nuclear weapons in the region, which of course can't happen as long as there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. (See pictures of what may be Syria's nuclear reactor...