The Reasons Behind the Decisions on Nuclear Weapon Ownership

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Iran’s health ministry said 224 people have been killed by Israel’s attacks, while Israel said 13 have been killed by Iranian strikes. Hundreds of people have been wounded in both countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the goal of Friday’s strikes was partially to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program, calling the strikes “pre-emptive”.

The strikes caused significant damage to linked sites such as the Natanz nuclear facility and a uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan, and killed multiple nuclear scientists in addition to military officials and civilians.

Israel has long claimed Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, with Netanyahu calling it an “existential threat to Israel”.

Iran has consistently denied it is developing nuclear weapons, saying its uranium enrichment program is exclusively for peaceful purposes such as energy, and international assessments have found no evidence that Iran, over the past 20 years, has had an active nuclear weaponisation program.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly said there is an Islamic fatwa — a legal ruling — against the development of nuclear weapons, and that such development is prohibited under Islamic law.

Shortly before Israel’s strikes on Iran, the United Nations’ global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), declared Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.

The IAEA cited “many failures” since 2019 to uphold its obligations to provide the agency with “full and timely co-operation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities”.

Earlier this month, the IAEA said Iran had enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.

In recent days, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Opposition leader Sussan Ley have all described Iran’s nuclear program as a significant “threat” to international peace and security.

Tilman Ruff is an honorary principal fellow at The University of Melbourne and the co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and was a founding chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

He told SBS News while it’s “pretty clear that Iran was flirting with nuclear weapons” and had an early nuclear weapons program around 20 years ago, there was no evidence of active weaponisation, or that Israel’s strike was “pre-emptive in the sense that Iran was clearly planning an attack on Israel that was imminent”.

Israel has never formally confirmed or denied if it has nuclear weapons itself, long maintaining a policy of deliberate ambiguity.

It’s also never signed two key international agreements aimed at the non-proliferation and prohibition of nuclear weapons. These factors have contributed to the widely held perception that Israel owns nuclear weapons.

Ruff described Israel’s “extremely dangerous” attack on Friday as “the most flagrant example of double standards that you could possibly imagine”.

Fire and smoke rising from a site that has been hit.

Fire and smoke rise into the sky after an Israeli attack on an oil depot in Tehran on Friday. The attacks targeted multiple military, scientific and residential locations. Credit: Getty images

When it comes to countries developing nuclear capacities, Ruff said the “inherent ambiguity” of nuclear programs made it a far bigger issue than just Iran.

“Any country that’s determined to do so, that’s got either an enrichment plant or a nuclear reactor, can build a nuclear weapon,” he said.

“If you can produce uranium to run in reactors, then you’ve got everything you need to enrich it to weapons grade. And there are other countries with vast stocks much larger than Iran’s of weapons-usable material.

“There are many other countries who have been flirting with having nuclear facilities and the capacity to produce fissile material quickly to shorten the path to a weapon, should they choose to do so.”

Which countries have nuclear weapons?

Eight countries have declared they have nuclear weapons: Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Russia and the US control the vast majority of these weapons, together possessing around 90 per cent of the 12,241 estimated warheads that exist globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

While Israel is also strongly believed to have nuclear weapons, including by SIPRI, it has long maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity.

Ruff said there had been “very clear threats” of nuclear weapon use from Israeli government members.

Most recently, in November 2023, Israeli minister Amihai Eliyahu said a nuclear strike on Gaza would be “one way” of responding to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

Some viewed Eliyahu’s comments as an implicit admission that Israel had nuclear capabilities.

The comments were disavowed by Israeli politicians, including a rebuke by Netanyahu.

SIPRI, in its annual assessment of armaments, disarmament and international security on Monday, warned the world’s nuclear arsenals were being enlarged.

SIPRI stated that the nine nuclear-armed states continued to modernise and upgrade their nuclear capabilities throughout 2024.

SIPRI’s Hans M Kristensen said: “The era of reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in the world, which had lasted since the end of the Cold War, is coming to an end.”

“Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements.”

What steps have been taken to limit nuclear weapons?

Multiple international agreements have aimed at curbing the spread of nuclear weapons with a view towards disarmament.

The United Nations-backed Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Weapons (NPT) came into effect in 1970, and included agreements from Russia, the US, the UK, China and France.

Those states agreed to pursue disarmament in exchange for the rest of the treaty’s signatories agreeing never to acquire nuclear weapons.

The treaty has overwhelming support, with 191 states being party to it, including Iran.

Israel is one of the few countries — along with India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Sudan — to not have signed on, due to its policy of deliberate ambiguity.

Ruff said a shortcoming of the treaty was that, while it contained a detailed regime regarding non-proliferation by states that didn’t already have nuclear weapons, there were no clear details or timeframe for other countries to implement disarmament.

Those countries, Ruff said, “show absolutely no sign of fulfilling that obligation after more than half a century” and have continued to justify their possession of nuclear weapons.

“And there’s of course also the four nuclear armed states — Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea — that are outside the treaty that are not formally bound by its requirements,” he said.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in 2017 and coming into effect in 2021, marked the first legally binding, comprehensive international agreement to ban nuclear weapons.

Signatories are prohibited from the development, testing, production, acquisition, stockpiling, use, threat of use, and transfer of nuclear weapons

According to the UN, 73 states have ratified or acceded to the treaty.

What about the Iran nuclear deal?

In 2015, under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for relief from certain sanctions imposed by the US, the European Union, and the UN Security Council.

Ruff said it was a “very successful agreement” while active, in which the IAEA carried out “extraordinarily intrusive” inspections to ensure Iran was compliant with its obligations.

In 2018, during his first term, US President Donald Trump walked away from the deal and reinstated sanctions.

Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, three years after it was established. Source: Getty / Anna Moneymaker

Iran said it would stop complying with parts of the agreement, and has substantially ramped up its enrichment program in the years since.

The sixth round of talks had been set to take place on Sunday, but Iran withdrew, saying such discussions were “meaningless” amid Israel’s ongoing strikes.

‘Law of the jungle’

Ruff described the current situation, in which several countries continue to own nuclear weapons, as a “completely unsustainable, unjust and very dangerous law of the jungle”, and that complete disarmament was necessary for peace to occur.

While countries such as the US have often cited a deterrent element to justify their continued possession of nuclear weapons, Ruff said that argument was a “fig leaf” that doesn’t contribute to stability, and as a strategy, was susceptible to inaccuracy and failure.

“It’s an extraordinarily dangerous idea, and it’s really just trumped out because deterrence sounds defensive and reasonable.

“What it means is a willingness to prepare and plan for the radioactive incineration of millions of civilians somewhere in the world. It’s completely unacceptable.”