The U.N. nuclear agency on Thursday expressed concern for the first time that Iran may currently be working on ways to turn enriched uranium into a nuclear warhead, instead of having stopped several years ago.

Its report appears to contradict an assessment by Washington that Tehran suspended such activities in 2003. It appears to jibe with the concerns of several U.S. allies that Iran may never have suspended such work.

Really now? What tipped them off? Ahmadinejad has been playing nuclear chicken with the United Nations for years. What exactly caused the U.N. to wake up today and tentatively acknowledge blazingly obvious reality, instead of continuing to close its eyes as it has been all along? Why now?

That’s the big question, after all. For the United Nations to even make such a statement, there has to have been a sea change somewhere else behind the scenes that triggered it. If China or Russia is prepared to put more pressure on Iran, this could be indicative of a change in the game, even if the U.N.’s statements are, in and of themselves, essentially worthless. The world will be watching closely, that’s for certain.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s board censured Iran on Friday, with 25 nations backing a resolution demanding that Tehran immediately freeze construction of its newly revealed nuclear facility and heed Security Council resolutions to stop uranium enrichment.

The trouble is, there’s no backup to the “or else”. And Iran knows it, too:

Iran remained defiant, with its chief representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency declaring that his country would resist “pressure, resolutions, sanction(s) and threat of military attack.”

Delegate Ali Asghar Soltanieh of Iran shrugged off the vote.

“Neither resolutions of the board of governors nor those of the United Nations Security Council … neither sanctions nor the threat of military attacks can interrupt peaceful nuclear activities in Iran, even a second,” he told the closed-door meeting, in remarks made available to reporters.

Iran can taunt the world and continue to develop nuclear weapons with impunity, in flat defiance of the Security Council or anyone else, because it knows full well that the UN can’t and won’t back up its threats with anything concrete. There’s no action that they can take. They can’t go to war or invade Iran. They can’t attack its nuclear facilities. They can’t even impose sanctions, which would risk alienating the strengthening resistence movement within Iran.

By the time anyone figures out a course of action on Iran, it will likely be too late. If it isn’t already.

Obama added: “Our expectation is that over the next several weeks, we will be developing a package of potential steps that we could take that will indicate our seriousness to Iran. . . . I continue to hold out the prospect that they may decide to walk through this door. I hope they do. But what I am pleased about is the extraordinary international unity that we have seen.”

Well, that’s nice. Even if it’s nowhere near accurate.

Better hope that umbrella is big enough to protect you from the ensuing shitstorm, Hillary.

“The leaders of Iran cannot give their children uranium for breakfast,” Peres said, adding that the world financial crisis would hamper Iran’s progress toward nuclear capability. “As the price of oil declines, Iran doesn’t have as much money to invest in uranium, missiles and terrorism,” he said.

Erm. Not sure about the logic of that one, Shimon. Worsening economic conditions usually breeds more hatred and a need for scapegoating, just as peace usually requires prosperity to achieve. But hey, way to keep up that optimism.

North Korea has committed “crimes against humanity” against its own people according to an independent report published on Monday that made a long-shot appeal for the U.N. Security Council to deal with the issue.

Released after North Korea’s October 9 nuclear test, the report describes Pyongyang’s brutal treatment of its citizens, from the beatings of pregnant women to force miscarriages to the abduction, torture and execution of political prisoners.

Commissioned by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, the paper seeks to spotlight rights abuses that have been previously reported but are often overshadowed by concern about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

(Emphasis mine).

And that, after all, is the point. North Korea has been committing horrific crimes against humanity that beg the question of why, more than sixty years after swearing “never again”, the world sits back and allows them to happen.

The answer to that question can presumably be found in two little words: nuclear weapons. The theory is that, while in the midst of dealing with the nuclear crisis, there’s little that the world can do about anything else North Korea is doing.

So what’s our excuse, then, when it comes to (nuclear-less) Sudan?

Except that we already pretty much all knew about them. And there wasn’t really anything anyone could do before, so what will really change here? The United Nations? Is anyone really delusional enough to think that this organization which is currently unable to do anything about the mass murder still ongoing in Sudan can do anything about North Korea? It’s not as though a UN threat of sanctions would be too scary to a country already suffering mass starvation. Or that anyone really believes anyone – US or otherwise – would use a military option. In short, a nuclear North Korea is pretty much a fait accompli, because the rest of the world has no options.

Damian thinks the only option for North Korea has to come from within:

Ultimately, the only ways Kim will be removed from power are a potentially catastrophic outside invasion, or an uprising from within. The former is a non-starter; the latter could work. From here on out, we should redouble our efforts to support those brave North Koreans who oppose their government, and to get news and information to the most hermetically sealed society on earth.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with Damian on this one, for a few reasons:

1) North Korea has no real viable, organized opposition of any form; it’s the world’s least free and most oppressive regime, where opposition is systematically stamped out in its infancy.

2) North Korea is also desperately poor, has no real economy, no rule of law, no independent institutions… in short, it’s much, much worse than even Iraq. We mustn’t assume that the removal of Kim Jong-Il would liberate a country just waiting for the opportunity to instill a flourishing democracy. There is no indication that the removal of the dictatorship would leave anything but total chaos and anarchy. And a situation where chaotic anarchy meets nuclear weapons might be the only thing scarier than the current situation. At least we KNOW which crazy guy has his finger on the button now. What will happen when it’s a free-for-all?

The question we should be asking is, why now? Granted, Kim Jong-Il is crazy, but by some accounts he’s also crazy like a fox. This test was an in-your-face to the West, an in-your-face to the United Nations, and an in-your-face to Bush. And its timing was no coincidence. Given the geopolitical factors in the rest of the world, namely the mess in Iraq and Iran’s ongoing game of nuclear chicken with the U.N., Kim Jong-Il probably decided the time was ripe to flex his muscle a little bit.

But does this mean we’re on the verge of nuclear disaster? That depends on your perspective. The worry about Iran going nuclear is that Ahmadinejad might be crazy enough to actually not care about the consequences of launching a nuclear strike, so deep is his hatred for Israel and the West. Is the same true of Kim Jong-Il? Or is North Korea just trying to prove a point?

These are questions that were always hard to answer about nuclear weapons, but if we think this is the worst of it, then we’re kidding ourselves. To date, nuclear weapons have only ever been in the hands of countries, ranging from democracies to despotic dictatorships with crazy leaders, but all countries nonetheless. It’s only a matter of time until a terrorist group or rogue organization gets ahold of nuclear weapons. What then? What happens when there are no diplomatic options to even attempt?

We’d better start thinking about it, and soon, because if you think that this week is scary, I fear we ain’t seen nothing yet.

My solution? Send in our ultimate weapons: Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

On that note, time for bed.

North Korea will upgrade its arsenal “in every way by employing all possible means and methods” and will greet any aggressors with “all-out do-or-die resistance and unprecedented devastating strikes,” Kim Il Chol said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

The PDRDC isn’t even bothering to feed anyone stories about “power stations” anymore. Emboldened perhaps by the world’s staggering inability to do much of anything to stop his horrifying regime from going nuclear, Kim Jong-Il is taking this game of chicken to the next level.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Does that mean he feels that the world can afford a nuclear attack by Iran on its enemies. How would that affect the delicate world economy, Mr. Caruso?

• Iran chose now to press the nuclear issue, figuring the U.S. can’t do much because of Iraq and the rest of the world couldn’t ever do much about it.
• The U.N. is powerless to stop Iran from going nuclear, and no Security Council sanctions – even if agreed upon by Russia and China – would be strong enough to get Iran to cave.
• U.S. Intelligence estimates that Iran is “very close” to mastering nuclear weapons technology, perhaps as close as a year.
• Unlike with Iraq, the world cannot count on Israel to stop Iran from going nuclear, as it has neither the range nor the capacity to prevent disastrous reprisals for an attack. It would likely come down to the U.S. to take military action, if it were to come to that, and at the moment this seems unlikely given the war in Iraq.

All in all, the analysis paints a very bleak picture in which Iran is marching steadily towards acquiring a nuclear bomb that it may have every intention of using to wipe Israel off the map.

If North Korea was the number-one threat to the world not too long ago, Iran has suddenly jumped up a few positions. However, I don’t believe we’re headed towards World War III tomorrow. There are still steps that can be taken, if the world recognizes the dangers in allowing Teheran to acquire nuclear technology. I only hope that these steps are taken, and that they are effective.

But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s spewings are ironically worrisome precisely because he seems to believe them. Unlike many Arab leaders who frequently call for Israel’s destruction when in truth it’s the last thing they actually want, Ahmadinejad actually seems crazy enough to put pragmatic or political concerns aside in favour of his virulent hatred.

Ahmadinejad knows that nobody in the world will stop him from going nuclear. He knows he can say the most hateful things possible and all the world will do is shake their heads and scold. And he knows that if he ever unleashes nuclear weapons at Israel, the Israelis would – and probably could – retaliate by wiping out Tehran.

The problem is, he may actually hate Israel so much that he doesn’t care.

If suicide bombers are so dangerous because they have no regard for their own life, then Ahmadinejad is the king of all suicide bombers; unpredictable and possibly likely to sacrifice his entire country to satisfy his blood lust. And it may well be too late to do anything to stop him from acquiring nuclear power.

Ahmadinejad has engaged the rest of the world in the ultimate game of chicken, and the rest of the world swerved first. The only question now is, can the Iranian forces for moderation and change respond quickly enough to rein him in? I’d like to think so, but it’s not looking good.

Iran has begun processing a new batch of uranium despite Western pressure on it to halt sensitive atomic work, possibly harming attempts to defuse a standoff over its nuclear aims, a diplomat said on Wednesday.

[ . . . ]

Western countries suspect Iran of seeking nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian atomic program, which Tehran vehemently denies, saying it only wants to generate electricity.

Yeah, right. And hell is just a sauna.

Somehow I don’t think Iran is planning to wipe Israel off the map using mere electricity.

North Korea promised to give up its nuclear weapons program on Monday, defusing a high-stakes crisis, but skeptics said the deal hammered out in Beijing was long on words and short of action.

South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China — the other players in the six-party talks — in exchange expressed a willingness to provide oil, energy aid and security guarantees.

Washington and Tokyo agreed to normalize ties with the impoverished and diplomatically isolated North, which pledged to rejoin the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps probably sees this as a golden opportunity to milk the West for all they’re worth, while pretending to give up weapons it has no intention of parting with. Or – worse – continuing to develop such weapons and then selling them to terrorist groups all over the world.

It’s important to give diplomacy a chance here, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any alternative. So I’ll try to be cautiously optimistic for now… or at least fake it. But with an unstable dictator like Kim Jong-Il at the helm, though, who knows what North Korea will do next?

The question is, who is left to stop the nuclear ambitions of one of the most dangerous theocratic thuggeries in the Mideast? Not the UN, which has never had the ability to do anything. Not the EU, which will hold an emergency session to see if they broke an agreement that was impossible to enforce in the first place. Not the US or, which after Iran have no political capital left to do anything even if they wanted to. Even Israel, which everyone is secretly hoping will play bad guy and repeat Osarik and then get chewed out by the world, can’t take that kind of risk to its security this time around.

North Korea’s already nuclear; it’s too late there. Iran is steadily marching toward that point of no return… and there’s nobody left to stop them. I fear that future generations of humanity will be paying the price for our spineless world for a long time.

The United States and Israel represent the real nuclear threat to the world, not Iran, Tehran’s chief envoy to the United Nations said on Friday after an abortive conference on controlling nuclear weapons.

Now we can watch the United Nations do what it does best: pander to Iran and condemn the US and Israel.

Sometimes I feel like Alice in Wonderland, reading this stuff.

North Korea is to strengthen its “atomic potential” in response to Washington’s hostile policies, Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency quoted the president of its parliament as saying Thursday.

The article then continues to expand on the quotes from the Dear Leader of Death Camps for – count them – ten paragraphs, before bothering to mention that “Washington’s hostile policies” don’t really exist except in Kim Jong-Il’s mind:

On Feb. 10, North Korea said it possessed nuclear weapons and was dropping out of six-party talks aimed at ending its atomic ambitions. It blamed U.S. hostility for the decision to pull out.

About six weeks later, the North said it was forced to increase its nuclear arsenal because it saw the U.S. military as a serious threat.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said Washington has no plans to invade the North.

Frankly, I’ve given up expecting fair media coverage from Reuters.

With Russia trying to re-establish a toehold in the Mideast, and Iran trying to develop the kinds of weapons that will reduce Israel to a radioactive pile of rubble, all I can do is wonder whether there’s anything the US – or the rest of the world – can do to stop them.

“We … have manufactured nukes to cope with the Bush administration’s evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Sadly, the international media is playing right into the horrifying regime’s hands, painting this as more of a political issue for Bush than a legitimate threat to the security of the world:

The statement also poses a challenge to Bush, who has long backed a diplomatic solution to the crisis but now faces two nations he once named as part of an “axis of evil” being openly defiant about their nuclear programs — North Korea and Iran. He went to war with the third axis nation, Iraq.

While most people have known for years that North Korea was building up its nukes, this official announcement signals that the “Dear Leader” has been emboldened by the world’s refusal to do anything about Iran or really anything about much of anything lately. Even if North Korea has had the nukes for a while, the announcement is a signal that they might be willing to use them.

This is not good news, to put it mildly.

If we can go so far as to attribute logic to a madman, we might suggest that Kim Jong-Il knows full well that the United States is the only country who might even try to do something and that the rest of the world hates the U.S.’s guts. He’s probably banking on the fact that most people will assume that America is more dangerous than a regime that sends children to prison camps that have gas chambers reminiscent of Auschwitz, that starves its own population en masse, and that ranked dead last in the Index of Economic Freedom for the umpteenth year in a row.

But never mind all that, of course the world would be safer if we just got rid of Bush. Suuuuuuuure.

FreeNorthKorea.net has plenty of reading material about the kind of things that are going on in North Korea even as we speak. I challenge anyone to read it and not be legitimately terrified at the idea that this country could launch nuclear warheads.

“We are able to say that we have strength such that no country can attack us because they do not have precise information about our military capabilities due to our ability to implement flexible strategies,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Shamkhani as saying Tuesday.

“We can claim that we have rapidly produced equipment that has resulted in the greatest deterrent,” he said, without elaborating.

Elaboration isn’t really necessary. We get the point. And none of us is fooled by the “deterrent” nonsense either.

The real question is, who will do anything to prevent Iran from going nuclear? The US is posturing but it’s doubtful if they will be able to get the support to mount a military intervention. The rest of the world probably either doesn’t care, or supports Iran’s ambitions. As for Israel – who has more motivation than anyone – a repeat of Osarik is unlikely if it puts Israelis at serious risk.

This is not good news.

Iran began processing uranium more than a week ago to prepare it for enrichment — a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons — in defiance of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, a diplomat said Wednesday.

But Iran’s president said Tehran would not give in to foreign pressure aimed at stopping what he said was a peaceful nuclear energy program, but which Washington says is a covert scheme aimed at building bombs.

A spokeswoman for the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the uranium processing was being closely monitored by the IAEA.

So what will the nice folks at the U.N. do with all the information they’re gleaning through this observation?

If Tehran fails to heed the demands, the board said it would consider possible “further steps” when it meets next month. Diplomats on the board said this included possibly referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which can impose sanctions.

In other words, nothing.

Something tells me that the IDF has training underway for a repeat of the Osarik strike…

The predicted North Korean response is: “Oh yeah? And if we don’t agree, what are you gonna do about it?” The predicted U.N. response is, well, silence.

In the meantime, the U.N. couldn’t be seen slouching on its regularly scheduled programming, so it resumed calls for a “nuclear weapons-free zone” in the Middle East – a call clearly aimed at Israel:

Israel has always said that it does not oppose signing the NPT, though only after there is stable peace in the Middle East.

It is an annual ritual at the IAEA annual conference that Arab and Muslim states try to get a resolution on the table that calls on Israel to give up its alleged nuclear weapons arsenal.

The last time they succeeded in getting such a resolution adopted by the IAEA General Conference was in 1991. Since 1987, the IAEA conference and U.N. General Assembly have passed 13 such resolutions. Israel has ignored them all.

Israel, by any normal standards, cannot be considered a threat to world security, and its neither-confirm-nor-deny policy is a necessity in a world that won’t let it defend itself from destruction by any means. Of course, since when are U.N. standards normal standards?

No, U.N. standards are more like these:

“Israel’s unsafeguarded facilities is a real threat to international peace and security,” Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, told the conference.

Excuse me for laughing. Iran, which has openly threatened to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons, claims that Israel, who would never dream of using the nuclear weapons they allegedly posses, is the threat to world security? But Iran knows that the best way to divert attention from itself is to attack Israel, the eternal scapegoat.

Mah nishtana?

I have a feeling that most of the world expects and secretly hopes that Israel will deal with Iran’s nuclear program the same way it dealt with Iraq’s ambitions in 1981. Of course, everyone will condemn Israel for it and bluster and threaten. But none of them want to see a nuclear Iran either, and they know that Israel’s the only country that will actually do something about it.

Hypocrites.

Just another typical day.

Update: Both the US and South Korea are saying it’s unlikely to be nuclear. Which, of course, begs the question of what it was.

Update #2: North Korea says it was for a hydroelectric project. But this is North Korea we’re talking about, so the credibility of that statement is somewhat suspect. Just look at their statement:

Paek, who was providing the first North Korean word on the explosion, said it was part of a construction project to build a hydro-electric dam in the remote mountainous region of Ryanggang on the Chinese border.

The BBC said that when Paek was asked why North Korea had not explained earlier about the blasts he told Rammell Pyongyang had not done so because all foreign journalists were liars.

I suppose that’s a good reason… if you subscribe to the North Korean version of logic.

The UN nuclear agency will next year host a conference, including Israel and Arab states, to discuss steps to make the Middle East into a zone free of nuclear weapons, the head of the U.N. watchdog said Sunday.

As Israel is the only Middle Eastern country believed to have nuclear weapons, the talks would effectively boil down to what the Israeli government would require to abandon the nuclear option. Israel has never confirmed nor denied having the nuclear bomb.

At a time when the world should be raising the alarm about Iran’s nuclear program – which actually poses a great threat to the entire world – the UN has chosen to revert to type and once again focus its energies on the traditional scapegoat, Israel.

I can’t wait.

The son of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi is “totally unhappy” about the way Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew has responded to his call for a government commitment to get to the bottom of his mother’s murder case.

Stephan Hachemi had been calling on Pettigrew to impose diplomatic sanctions against Iran for failing to find the person responsible for his mother’s murder.

“The Iranian ambassador has nothing to do in Canada right now,” Hachemi told a news conference Tuesday. “He should be expelled. The embassy should be closed.”

It’s understandable that the son of a murdered woman is grieving and lashing out. And the government seems to be paying attention.

But what really bothers me about this whole affair is not so much that Canadians are angry about the lack of justice in this case, but that nobody is nearly angry enough about the lack of justice in every other case in Iran. Canada spends years appeasing a brutal dictatorship that has suppressed virtually every human right we take for granted. Those Iranians don’t count. But when an Iranian who happens to have Canadian citizenship is the victim, she counts. We shrug off thousands of unexplained murders, but when Zahra Kazemi is the victim, suddenly everyone is expecting the kind of fair and transparent justice system that lives up to Canadian standards.

It’s not unusual for countries to react much more strongly when their own citizens are victimized. But the hypocrisy gets to me. Iran is not a democracy. It’s not a very nice place to live, especially if you happen to be, say, female, or non-Muslim. And it’s in danger of acquiring nuclear weapons, in which case it might be too late to curb the threat.

And while Canadians continue to issue a “tsk tsk” about the Zahra Kazemi case, we are simultaneously following the Europeans, not the Americans, in softpedalling this new nuclear threat and refusing to take a hard line. This is but one of a long list of the things that the Canadian government just doesn’t get.

Israel gets it, however:

Iran’s ability for nuclear armament should not worry just us but the entire free world and moderate Arabic countries as well, according to Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen Moshe Ya’alon.

And of course, if and when Israel takes matters into its own hands, and the United Nations issues a routine condemnation of Israel for having the courage to do so, Canada will likely be right there on the General Assembly floor, loudly… abstaining.

Iran is not fully cooperating with U.N. inspectors and must come clean about the full extent of its nuclear program within months, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday.

Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran’s cooperation has been “less than satisfactory” and warned that the process of clarifying unresolved issues — particularly over Iran’s uranium enrichment activities — could not be allowed to drag on for ever.

I’m sure I’m not the only one hit with a sense of deja vu. Though if I were the type to gamble, I’d bet that the situation in Iran will never come to what has transpired in Iraq. The two are vastly different, and while Bush had grouped them under his “Axis of Evil” umbrella, it’s still like comparing apples to oranges.

However, ElBaradei would also do well to remember that his weapons inspections teams lost all credibility when they failed in Iraq. Countries like Iran might feel more comfortable flouting them now, knowing that the U.N. will not do anything beyond shaking a fist at a country’s failure to cooperate.

And of course, the worst-case scenario is that Iran is far ahead of anyone’s expectations in terms of development of nuclear weaponry. That would truly be catastrophic, because if the U.N. allows this lack of cooperation to drag for months, then a militant Islamist regime would have acquired nuclear capability, and does anyone have any doubts as to who the first victims would be?

Far more likely, of course, is that Iran is simply flouting the process to prove a point. In any case, the U.N. and most of the world demonstrated pretty clearly that they won’t do anything to countries who flout the inspections. That leaves us in a dangerous place. Iraq’s WMDs were nowhere to be found, so the United States ended up looking foolish. But remember the story of the boy who cried wolf: what happens when there really is a threat?

Iran insists it is following international regulations and that all its facilities are open to inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog agency. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday it has been aware for several years of Iran’s plans to mine and process uranium.

[ . . . ]

Washington says those two facilities are part of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.

A disconcerting thought.

If we wait around for Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, I somehow doubt he’d even give the world a warning. With one push of the button he’ll obliterate Israel, attack the United States, and probably take over many of his neighbours. I mean, we’re talking about Saddam Hussein here.

The world has a responsibility to see to it that Iraq never develops nuclear weapons. If it is allowed to, G-d help us all.

But reclusive North Korea remained defiant, denouncing Washington’s missile defense system and threatening the United States with destruction if it launched a nuclear attack over its suspected atomic weapons program.

North Korea said it had “increased its self-defensive military capability” to cope with the “U.S. intensified policy to invade and stifle it with nukes.”

“If the U.S. unleashes a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, it will not escape its destruction,” Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

That’s of course of little comfort to South Korea, which is hoping to avert a crisis through diplomacy. While appeasement of hostile nuclear threats is of course extremely dangerous, it makes sense that South Korea is scared, given the fact that it’s the most likely to suffer if North Korea launches an attack.

With the escalation in North Korea, inevitable comparisons to Iraq are being made on a daily basis. Jonah Goldberg in the Washington Times explains why the two must be treated differently.

Um, yeah. That’s because North Korea has the fifth-largest standing army in the world, huge supplies of weapons of mass-destruction, probably including nukes, and the ability to inflict staggering casualties on South Korea, Japan and our own troops.

[. . .]

Of course, Iraq wants to be treated like North Korea. That’s why Iraq is pursuing weapons of mass destruction. And that’s why the Bush administration wants to keep that from happening. The whole rationale for stopping Saddam now is that the price might be too high to stop him later, like it already is with North Korea.

A heavy dose of reality is needed here. Some oppose all war on principle, not recognizing that you can’t stand in the middle of a battlefield holding up a white ribbon when you’re being shot at, and that the our enemies’ bombs can’t distinguish between activists and pacifists when they fall. Others say that we can’t right one wrong if we’re not going to right all the others at the same time. To them, I say that we’re doing the best we can, one situation at a time, and that if they really wanted to change the world, they should start backing those efforts.

What, though, about Israel’s nukes? Does its status as an undeclared nuclear power put it on a par with Iraq, which has tried to become one? No. [. . .]

Two decades on, Israel has still not signed the NPT. This infuriates the treaty’s supporters, who have been striving to make it “universal”. But, as with any other treaty, governments are free not to sign. What they are not free to do is sign, receive the foreign (civilian) nuclear help to which signing entitles them, and then try to build a bomb secretly. This, it is now ruefully accepted, is what Iraq tried to do, and may still be trying to do. Israel is thought to possess a large nuclear arsenal, about which it is not being open and honest, and this is provoking to its neighbours. But it is not evidence of “double standards”. Being a nuclear-armed power is not, by itself, a breach of international law.

The article provides a lot more historical detail and essentially explains why comparing Israel and Iraq is like comparing apples to, well, plastic explosives.