Aletho News

Have the US and Israel killed non-proliferation?

Ashes of Pompeii | April 28, 2026

The United Nations has elected Iran as one of the thirty-four vice presidents of the 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, proceeding despite formal objections from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. Rather than a mere procedural footnote, this appointment signals a pronounced structural realignment and underscores the increasing diplomatic isolation of Western capitals within multilateral governance.

For decades, nuclear restraint was widely regarded as a stabilizing imperative, a framework endorsed by practically all nations, including Iran, who consistently endorsed this through state doctrine and a longstanding religious fatwa explicitly prohibiting the pursuit of atomic armaments. The Iranian prohibition was the foundation of the JCPOA agreement allowing internation inspection of Iranian nuclear sites. It is important to note that it was the USA who withdrew from the JCPOA agreement and not Iran, and Iran seems to have respected the terms even after this withdrawal.

This is the context for the current situation. Iran has been attacked by the USA and Israel because of the perceived threat that Iran might, despite the inspections and the conclusions of the American intelligence agencies, cross the nuclear threshold. Please note the contrast: Iran was attacked because it might develop nuclear weapons, whereas North Korea enjoys relative security precisely because it has nuclear weapons. That is to say, non-proliferation treaty compliance would seem to correlate with heightened vulnerability.

Whatever one might think of Kim Jong Un, the caricatures propagated regarding North Korea’s leadership as erratic, epitomized by the “Rocketman” epithet, are increasingly untenable when subjected to rigorous strategic analysis. Evaluating outcomes rather than rhetoric, it becomes evident that Pyongyang’s leadership was methodically positioned ahead of other global policymakers. While other regimes face coercive diplomacy or military intervention, North Korea’s deterrent has insulated it from external operations. We can assume other countries have noticed this, that non-proliferation or strategic ambiguity offer far less protection than verified atomic capability.

And this realization is coming at a time when America itself is coming to be seen as more erratic, and potentially a less reliable partner than it was perceived to be in the past. Can America’s allies still feel secure under America’s nuclear umbrella? Is an “America First” America going to risk nuclear conflageration to defend its allies? Many will have calculated that it might not.

Washington and Jerusalem have long justified their confrontational posture toward Tehran by citing the purported threat of an Iranian breakout, even as Israel maintains an arsenal that, though officially unacknowledged, is universally understood by all. If the recent campaigns against Iranian military and energy infrastructure were to be assessed through a deterrence lens, it can be argued that the absence of an atomic shield rendered Tehran strategically exposed. Had Iran possessed a credible second-strike capability, those operations would likely have been deemed too escalatory to execute.

Consequently, the international community can probably anticipate a quiet reassessment of nuclear thresholds. Governments are not yet explicitly announcing an intention to seek atomic weapons, but it does seem evident that more will be seriously considering it, whether because they no longer trust America as ally or because they see that nuclear deterrance has been successful for North Korea. For now, it seems likely that these nuclear intentions will remain under wraps, but who can doubt that, at the very least, multiple feasability studies will have been undertaken across the world.

The strategic calculus advanced by the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government has effectively engineered an environment where non-proliferation is, at best, a diminishing paradigm, and at worst, an existential error for a sovereign state. Therefore, the eventual deployment of tactical or strategic nuclear assets across multiple countries becomes increasingly probable.

The profound irony, of course, is that given the stated justifications for the launch of the US/Israeli war on Iran, that Israel will be a highly plausible future target within the very security vacuum it helped to normalize.

April 28, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Militarism | Israel, United States, Zionism