UAE Nuclear Deal: Model for Peace or Bombs for Sneaks?
"President Obama wants to go to zero nuclear weapons. But his first official act of nuclear restraint — the submission to Congress of a U.S. civilian nuclear cooperative agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — suggests why we might not get there," writes Henry Sokolski in today's Washington Times. Sokolski is executive director of the Ploughshares-funded Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and a member of the congressional Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism.
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"At a hearing July 8, House Foreign Affairs Committee members worried aloud that the UAE deal might not be the 'peaceful' alternative to Iran's exploitation of civilian nuclear energy to make bombs it needs to be. Should the U.S. use it as a template for similar deals with other Arab states that, after Iran's program, have announced plans to build power reactors of their own? Members on both sides of aisle were not entirely convinced.
The deal conditions the transfer of U.S. nuclear goods upon the UAE not making nuclear fuel — a process that could bring any state within weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons. It also requires the UAE to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its nuclear program under a new set of less constrained procedures known as the Agreed Protocol."
All of this sounds pretty good, concedes Sokolsky, but at issue is whether the UAE would be willing to sanction Iran for "nuclear misbehavior," and to cooperate with IAEA surveillance.
Washington Times
