U.S. may support nuke conference proposal challenging Israel’s nuclear program
Until the 2010 Review Conference – these conferences meet every five years – the United States supported Israel’s position without much quibbling. In 2010, however, there appeared to be differences emerging between Israel’s and the U.S. approach to regional nuclear disarmament.
Israeli officials said they worried that the gap between Israel’s and the U.S. position was growing.
Thomas Countryman, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, has been in Israel since Tuesday, engaged in intensive talks with high-level officials from Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the National Security Council, and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.
Countryman is still in Israel, and no agreement satisfactory to Israel has yet been reached.
A senior Israeli government official Wednesday told Bloomberg View that “Israel is increasingly concerned that the United States is not going to prevent the NPT review conference currently meeting in New York from adopting a resolution on the Middle East that would jeopardize Israel’s national security.”
A senior Israeli official told Haaretz that Israel fears a “rerun” of what happened at the last NPT Review Conference, in 2010. Five years ago Egypt was successful in persuading the United States to include a section in the Conference’s concluding statement which referred to Israel’s nuclear capabilities and urged it to open all its nuclear facilities to UN inspections.
The 2010 statement also called for convening, within two years, a regional conference to discuss ways to make the Middle East an area free of weapons of mass destruction.
Israel’s then-new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (he came to power in 2009) did not bother to hide his anger with President Barack Obama, who came to power in January 2009 and who made his first major foreign policy speech in Prague, on 5 April 2009, outlining his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Israeli sources were quoted in newspaper stories accusing the Obama administration of violating agreements the Nixon administration reached with Israel in the fall of 1969 which dealt with the nuclear issue. These sources said that the September 1969 understandings had guided U.S. policy on Israel’s nuclear program for four decades, until Obama, in 2010, reneged on the 1969 U.S. commitments to Israel.
Netanyahu demanded clarifications and “compensation” from Washington for what he saw as a U.S. violation of its commitments, and he appeared to have received both during a meeting with Obama in the White House in July 2010, during which Obama pledged that there would be no change in American policy on Israel’s nuclear program and that Washington would not seek to undermine Israel’s policy of ambiguity over its nuclear arms.
After the meeting with Netanyahu, Obama said the U.S. supported the Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, but he added: “Our view is that a comprehensive and durable peace in the region and full compliance by all regional states with their arms control and nonproliferation obligations are essential precursors for its establishment.” Obama also said, “We strongly oppose efforts to single out Israel, and will oppose actions that jeopardize Israel’s national security.”
The senior Israeli official told Haaretz that Israel is worried that as was the case in 2010, Washington’s eagerness to include in the Conference’s concluding statement a reference to making the Middle East a WMD-free zone would push the United States to make concessions to Egypt which would undermine what Israel regard as essential security interests.
Bernadette Meehan, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, said, though, that the United States was aware of Israel’s concerns and that the United States would work to ensure that the final statement satisfies both U.S. and Israeli interests.
“Both the United States and Israel support the creation of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East,” said Meehan. “We are working closely with our Israeli partners to advance our mutual interests, including preserving the NPT.”
“This Administration and this President do not break commitments to our Israeli partners,” she said.
