from Pax Christi International
Pax Christi International strongly supports the creation of a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East as a significant contribution to a nuclear weapons free world.
To this end, Pax Christi International urges all stakeholders to encourage negotiations towards a binding international treaty that would abolish such weapons definitively.
Unfortunately the balance of power in the region means a nuclear arms race is inevitable and entirely out of the USA’s control. Once Iran has both an atom bomb and the means to deliver it regionally, Saudi Arabia will buy or make their own. So now we see why the US has been trying to keep Iran from the bomb – and why the US has kept a ring of bases between Iran and Saudi Arabia (Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Qutar, etc.) so as to reassure the Saudis that we could shoot down any Iranian IRBM. I suspect that we’ll keep such a presence no matter what – despite any cut to the Pentagon’s budget. It’s not disarmament that leads to peace, it’s balance of power.