All eyes on Geneva meeting •By George S. Hishmeh | Special to Gulf News
A turning point in international relations is in the offing, probably starting next week when senior officials of the so-called P5+1 countries — the US, Russia, France, Britain, China and Germany — meet in Geneva with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to ascertain whether Iran’s nuclear programme is indeed peaceful. Much as many hope this will be the case, the Iranian foreign minister needs to assure his audience at the meeting, and the world, that the Iranian step is verifiable and transparent
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But this anticipated Iranian step has, in the meantime, precipitated an ugly offensive by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly and at every occasion where he spoke while in the US. Consequently, it opened a Pandora’s Box in the US, despite the fact that US officials have for long remained mysteriously mum about Israel’s secretive nuclear arsenal, a point that troubled many Mideast governments.
For a start, Egyptian Foreign Minister, Nabeel Fahmy, whose country has diplomatic relations with Israel, has recently urged the Netanyahu government to sign the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
But what could have been more effective in this respect would have been for Syria to insist Israel should follow its lead. The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, applauded Syria at a news conference in Bali, Indonesia, for this first action saying the US and Russia were “very pleased” with the progress made so far in destroying its alleged stockpile of 1,000 tonnes by the November 1 deadline set by the UN.
Similarly, Iran should also adopt this approach in the hope that all Middle East, especially Israel, will be free of the weapons of mass destruction.
Washington Post columnist Walter Pincus was the earliest, if not the first, in these times to take Israel to task for its unyielding position over its arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons. “It’s time for Israel to stop making military threats and to propose an imaginative diplomatic move — risky as it may seem — to help ease nuclear tensions in the Middle East.” He suggested that Israel should start “by acknowledging its own nuclear weapons programme”. He added: “[Israel] has accused Iran of seeking the capability to produce nuclear weapons, when for years Israel has been believed to possess hundreds of nuclear bombs and missiles, along with multiple delivery systems. It continues to insist it doesn’t have them.”
Another popular columnist, David Ignatius, suggested what he saw as “a great strategic opportunity” for US President Barack Obama, to invite Mideast regional leaders to Camp David “this fall to explore new security structures for the (Arabian) Gulf.”
A great attention-grabber has been a recent announcement from the Wilson Centre, a respected Washington-based think-tank, about ‘The Avner Cohen Collection’. which features “exciting new materials regarding the development of the Israeli nuclear programme” and interviews with key policymakers and scientists from Israel, the US and France that “shed new light on the development of the Israeli nuclear programme”.
Here is what the lead paragraph of the introduction says: “More than 60 years have passed since Israel began its nuclear project and almost half a century has elapsed since Israel first crossed the nuclear weapons threshold. Yet, Israel’s nuclear history has no voice of its own: No insiders have told the story from within. Unlike all seven other nuclear weapons states, Israel’s nuclear policy is built upon non-acknowledgement. Israel believes that nuclear silence is golden, referring to this national conduct as amimut (opacity in Hebrew). “Amimut is the public trademark of Israel’s relationship with the bomb. It involves secrecy, ambiguity and taboo.”
Time for Netanyahu to tell all or many of his international supporters will be held liable.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com