Iran’s nuclear activities loom over high-level UN summit

NEW YORK: The US continues to believe that a mutual return to compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal offers the best hope of “making sure we are putting Iran’s nuclear program back in a box and averting any kind of crisis,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.
Blinken delivered his remarks at a press conference, attended by Arab News, at the UN headquarters in New York, where he led a 60-strong delegation to help kick off high-level nuclear discussions over the coming month.
He said that the US has agreed to an EU proposal, drafted “after many, many months of discussions, negotiations and conversations,” adding that it remains to be seen whether Iran will follow suit.
“We remain prepared to move forward on the basis of what has been agreed. It’s still unclear whether Iran is prepared to do that,” Blinken said.
His comments came shortly after the US slapped a new round of oil and petrochemical sanctions on Tehran and follows claims by Iran’s atomic energy chief, Mohammad Eslami, that Tehran has the ability to build a nuclear weapon, “but does not plan to do so.”
State parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons gather every five years in New York to review the agreement’s operation and the implementation of its provisions: Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, destroying the existing nuclear arsenal in order to eventually achieve a nuclear weapon free world, and promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the conference with a warning that it is taking place at a critical juncture for world peace and security, “as humanity is in danger of forgetting the lessons forged in the terrifying fires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Geopolitical tensions are reaching new highs, Guterres said, while states “are seeking false security in stockpiling and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on doomsday weapons that have no place on our planet.”
The last Review conference was in 2015 and the current conference was supposed to have taken place in 2020, but was delayed by the pandemic.
With its membership of 191 countries — including five nuclear weapon states, China, Russia, France, the US and UK — the NPT is the most wide-ranging multilateral arms control agreement. It came into force in 1970 and has been a cornerstone of the global non-proliferation regime.
The Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was agreed after the 2015 review conference so it has never been discussed by state parties before.
Gustavo Zlauvinen, president of the 10th Review Conference of the NPT, told Arab News that he believes the US and other state parties will raise concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear programs, referring to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report which revealed “inconsistencies and a host of other issues (which) cast a shadow on (Iran’s nuclear) program and have (raised) questions about whether that program is truly for peaceful purposes or not.”
Zlauvinen said that he expects Iran to defend its program as a peaceful one.
“And then the question will be how much the US and others will push for this issue to be included or not in any outcome document.”
He added: “I believe that the more progress we may have in the talks in Vienna regarding the JCPOA, the less the level of discussions in the review conference will be. But if there is no progress on those talks, there will probably be more debate here.”
Speaking on behalf of the Arab Group, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s minister of foreign affairs, said that Arab states view the NPT regime as highly important, and acknowledge the IAEA as the only agency with a mandate to verify incidents related to the peaceful use of nuclear material.
He told world ambassadors and ministers that the treaty was based on a deal that called on nuclear states to eliminate their atomic weapons and on all other nations to commit to not producing such weapons.
“Nuclear weapons states have not complied. The Arab world has concerns about that,” said Safadi, urging those states to adopt transparency regarding their nuclear arsenals.
He called for the creation of binding instruments to reassure non-nuclear states of international safeguards against the use of atomic weapons.
Safadi also evoked the clear ban on nuclear technology transfers to states that are not party to the treaty, singling out Israel, one of four countries that have not joined the agreement, along with Pakistan, India and South Sudan.
The 1995 Review conference ended with a decision to create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
Safadi said that the “Middle East has enough troubles already to deal with (without) any new form of crisis or the entry of nuclear weapons to our nations.”
Jordan “fully commits to the NPT,” he added.
But Safadi said that the goal of achieving a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East goes hand in hand with the resolution of all Middle Eastern issues, including the Palestinian struggle, the war in Syria, the Yemeni conflict and the tensions in Libya.
“These are real impediments, mutually reinforced. Without mutual resolution (of them all) we will continue to see the Middle East struggling,” he said.