The Challenges and Avenues for Banning Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East

Abstract

This essay explores the complex dynamics surrounding the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East. It examines the regional and international perspectives on a nuclear weapons-ban norm and the motivations behind them of some key players, including Iran, Israel, and Egypt. The essay discusses the interplay between the regional and international levels that shapes the approaches of those key players to regional security and the fundamental differences and security concerns that have prevented any change in normative practice. It then discusses the potential impact of an NWFZ on the regional balance of power. It provides an important perspective on the complex and volatile geostrategy of the Middle East and the competing interests that may affect the adoption of the nuclear weapons-ban norm in the future.

INTRODUCTION

Complex regional rivalries and security concerns have always challenged the promotion of regional security arrangements and the adoption of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) normative order in the Middle East. The promotion of the Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ) and the weak internalization of the weapons of mass destruction ban norms within the region has become a controversial issue among regional and global actors as their approaches to regional security are so different and based on a variety of different security concerns that cannot coexist. This essay shows that the adoption or rejection of an international ban on nuclear weapons by Egypt, Iran, and Israel—the key players in any regional nuclear weapons dialog—overlaps with their considerations of the establishment of an NWFZ.

The decline of American involvement in the Middle East over the past decade created a multipolar power structure of local players with competing interests that struggle for hegemony and influence. Those interests largely converge around the future of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons ban norms. This struggle is taking place in an explosive environment of complex proxy wars, terrorism, energy scarcity, and external intervention that are characterizing the tensions in the region. To resolve this complexity, the main underlying determinates of the balance of power in the region can be explained as a combination of military competition between Israel and Iran for nuclear supremacy, a diplomatic campaign that Egypt and Iran are leading concerning the establishment of nuclear norms, and tensions between Sunni and Shia ideology in the Islamic world.

Many countries in the Middle East are parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), committed to nonproliferation and disarmament, and support the promotion of nuclear activity for peaceful purposes (UNTC 1968). Among the key players, Egypt is a member of the NPT and has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the slow progress toward establishing a WMDFZ and with the unfulfilled disarmament commitments of the nuclear weapon states that the treaty defines. While Iran is also a member of the NPT and maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, it has become a target of international scrutiny and sanctions due to concerns about the nature of its nuclear activities. Israel, on the other hand, has not signed the treaty, nor considers itself obligated to decisions made by the NPT conferences.

From a regional perspective, a nuclear weapon ban will create dramatic shifts in the regional balance of power since only Israel has been attributed with having nuclear weapon capabilities. Israel, however, has never introduced or admitted to having nuclear weapons as part of its policy of nuclear opacity. Accordingly, Iran and Egypt, which lead the Arab countries’ diplomatic efforts on NWFZ, have sought the establishment of a NWFZ to build trust and eliminate the Israeli nuclear threat. Israel, on the other hand, maintains that trust should be preconditioned before any progress on the subject is made and perceives the Arab countries and Iran as motivated to erode its security. This article reviews the underlying reasons for these regional key players’ positions on an NWFZ, and it illustrates the challenges and opportunities for promoting norms toward the adoption of the TPNW.

The essay briefly discusses the diplomatic efforts to establish a NWFZ in the Middle East. It then shows how Egypt, Iran, and Israel justify their positions and how each position is linked to their views on the regional balance of power. Next, it discusses the great powers’ involvement in conflicts in the region and the main obstacles to adopting nuclear-weapon ban norms. It concludes with suggestions for overcoming those obstacles.

Proposals and Negotiations for a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East

In 1974, Iran and Egypt submitted their first proposal to establish a NWFZ to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 1974). Since then, Egypt has been expanding its diplomatic efforts to promote a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (WMDFZ) (UNGA 1990). In the early 1990s, regional negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors ultimately failed to promote a regional security mechanism. However, the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference adopted a Resolution on the Middle East and made it an integral part of the NPT agenda (NPT RevCon 1995). In 2010, the NPT states parties reached a consensus over convening a conference in 2012 on a Middle East WMDFZ (NPT RevCon 2010). Israel agreed to take part in the process, despite its official “long corridor” policy that supports some forms of de jure NWFZ but makes it conditional upon establishing trust and its recognition as a sovereign state by all countries in the region as the first step (Beres 2016, 8).¹ Nevertheless, the conference did not materialize after the United States (an NPT depository state) called it off in 2012 on the grounds of “present conditions in the region” (Nuland 2012).

Official facilitation attempts to realize the WMDFZ conference continued between 2013 and 2014, with Israel playing an active part in the process. Israel’s insistence to agree on draft agenda issues and the rules of procedures before convening the conference was perceived by Egypt as intended to raise difficulties. The Arab states objected to the continuation of the process and chose to promote it instead within the 2015 NPT Review Conference. This move ultimately failed after Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States rejected the final draft on the creation of a WMDFZ. The United States cited “unrealistic” and “unworkable” conditions as the reason why the dialog was terminated (Gottemoeller 2015).

A more recent expression of the Arab League’s efforts to establish a WMDFZ Middle East occurred in December 2018 with the adoption of UNGA Resolution (2018) that called to convene a conference on an annual basis, until the formation of a legally binding treaty on a Middle East WMDFZ. In November 2019, the first session was held with the participation of the Arab League countries and Iran (UNGA 2019). The conference reinvigorated the formal regional dialog and provided a platform for the views of the countries in the region on the issue. In November 2021, the second session convened for closed discussions that focused on formulating the agenda issues and the rules of procedures in which it was agreed that the conference’s decisions would be based on consensus. Such a consensus-based mechanism might satisfy some of the Israeli concerns, however, Israel has argued that there was no change in its prerequisites for regional security negotiations, not least when it was agreed at the conference that the discussions should be delinked from the regional peace process.

Despite Israel’s absence from the subsequent sessions of the conference in 2022 and 2023, negotiations included concrete discussions and an exchange of ideas on the nature of the future treaty and the design of its principles (UNGA 2022a; UNGA 2023a). In essence, the future treaty builds on the existing multilateral nonproliferation mechanisms, including treaties, safeguards, and verification, which from an Israeli perspective, does not come to alleviate its fundamental concerns. At the fourth session of 2023, held in November under the shadow of war between Israel and Hamas, the convening parties condemned the unprecedented nuclear threats made by Israeli officials against Hamas in Gaza (UNGA 2023a, Articles 14–15). However, as the pressure on Israel grows, the ability to bring it to the negotiation table is getting further away at this point.

The Regional Viewpoint on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

The Arab states, and specifically Israel’s immediate neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, view Israel’s nuclear activity as contributing to the regional nuclear arms race, and as a risk to the safety and the environmental and humanitarian security of the entire region. Of particular concern is the operation of a nuclear facility in Dimona in the Negev region (150 km south of Tel Aviv), which is not safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Thus, after decades in which Egypt and the other Arab states had unsuccessfully promoted the establishment of a WMDFZ within the NPT framework, it was no wonder Egypt also proactively promoted the TPNW. As a strong advocate of nonproliferation, Egypt participated in the negotiation process of the treaty, representing the League of Arab States and the New Agenda Coalition that saw the humanitarian impacts of the TPNW as a continuation of the NPT's norms and principles (UNGA 2023b; Van Wyk and Yarik 2021). Despite this, as of today only Palestine and several African countries have ratified the treaty but they lack the political power to bring about a normative change in the region, while Iran, Egypt, and most other Arab nations have not formally joined it (UNODA n.d.).

Israel claims to have unique strategic vulnerabilities that arms control arrangements cannot mitigate. Israel perceives the Iranian nuclear program and its destabilizing activities in the region as an existential threat, and the international community’s efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran as poor and insufficient. Hence, Israel’s traditional approach is one of reluctance, suggesting that confidence-building measures and trust should be pursued first to support the conditions for a WMDFZ holistically. This also explains Israel’s opposition to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution (71/258) from December 23, 2016, which called for the initiation of discussions on the TPNW, and its absence during the negotiation process on the treaty. During a subsequent discussion on WMD in 2022 that took place in the UN First Committee (disarmament and international security), Israel’s representative stated that the establishment of an NFWZ in the region cannot provide a remedy to the region’s unique security tensions if countries in the region do not comply with existing nonproliferation practices (UNGA 2022b).

The invasion of Hamas in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 was a game changer for the entire Middle East and specifically to any foreseen possibility to reinvigorate a regional security dialog. The unprecedented scale and sophistication of the attack struck Israel’s most sensitive nerve—its very existence—emphasizing the importance that Israel sees in preserving its regional military superiority and the value of its ambiguous nuclear policy to support its national security goals.

Despite being a member of the NPT, much evidence points out that Iran’s actions, specifically since 2021, have no credible civilian justification and can only contribute to developing a nuclear bomb (Council of the EU, 2022; IAEA 2022). Iran continued to develop its program while challenging the nonproliferation regime with a brinkmanship strategy. Accordingly, it has tended to take part in the diplomatic dialog on its nuclear activities, but at the same time promoted its military nuclear project. This strategy correlates with Iran’s supportive approach toward the TPNW while abandoning its commitments to fulfill the obligations to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (IAEA 2023a). According to Rafael Mariano Grossi, Director General of the IAEA, this comes to realize, inter alia, by Iran’s rejection of IAEA inspection activities, increased production of Uranium enrichment activities, and disengagement from the IAEA (IAEA 2023b). In November 2023, Ambassador Grossi reported that “Since 16 February 2021, the Agency has not been able to verify Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile.” (IAEA 2023c). Since Iran’s foreign policy has intensified distrust and discouraged a regional security dialogue, its foreign policy is undermining the achievements and value of the TPNW.

Key Obstacles to the Adoption of a Nuclear-Weapon-Ban Norm

Two key obstacles are likely to influence the adoption of a regional nuclear-weapon ban. First, the great powers that rejected the TPNW, are deeply involved in the Middle East through regional geopolitics, which creates dependencies for states in the region. The nuclear powers have called on regional states to renounce their support for the TPNW, with the United States describing such support as a “strategic error” (Lederer 2020). For many states in the region, maintaining strong alliances with the great powers is indispensable to both economic growth and national security. The great powers are the major exporters of arms to the Middle East, while the region has the highest military expenditure in the world as a share of gross domestic product with an average of 3.9% (Tian et al. 2023). Furthermore, the need to develop energy sources in the region plays into the hands of the great powers, which are invested in regional nuclear projects and other commercial relationships that yield economic benefits for both sides. Christopher Ford, the former United States assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, said in 2019 that a full-fledged nuclear cooperation partnership could lead to the establishment of political and economic ties lasting as long as 50 or 100 years, and it can be the catalyst for additional cooperation between governments on many other national security and foreign policy issues (Ford 2020).

The second obstacle to adopting the norms is the many active conflicts in the region, which affect all Middle Eastern countries in one way or another. The conflicts involve multiple actors, both state and non-state, such as Hizballah (an Islamist political party and militant group in Lebanon) and regional groups like the Houthis (a militant and paramilitary Shia movement in Yemen). Some are long-standing, such as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and some have emerged in the past decade, like the Syrian civil war, in which there are multiple stakeholders involved with competing interests, including Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Turkey, and the US. The interplay between economic and social forces, as well as between international and domestic dynamics fuels those conflicts and escalates them. The result is an environment in which constructive norms based on trust, confidence, and responsible behavior are unlikely to emerge in support of any regional security arrangement, let alone a nuclear ban.

CONCLUSIONS

Historically, the development of nonproliferation norms and their implementation resulted from evolving dynamics and interactions between international and regional politics. For example, international and regional institutions were established to create formal frameworks to advance chemical and biological weapons bans and the promotion of NWFZs. However, the content of those norms and the commitment to them were achieved by governments committing to cooperation at the regional levels.

Given the nature of the conflict in the Middle East, it appears that any chance of implementing the TPNW can be rejected outright. Yet if we look more closely, there are factors in play that may eventually lead to broader acceptance of the TWPN in the Middle East. First, as noted by the IAEA, a resolution that ends the crisis with Iran will be key to moving forward to a regional dialogue phase. Additionally, in recent years Israeli officials have affirmed that the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is being seriously contemplated. Closer cooperation between the moderate countries in the region can create more incentives to promote related ban norms as a first step.

The Abraham Accords of 2020 that normalize the relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco are an encouraging sign, as they have a real impact on warming relations and building trust between peoples. The agreements are starting to materialize today with the emergence of tourism, investment, and trade relations between the states. These agreements are an expression of a growing security dialogue trend among the countries of the region, that takes place alongside the regional tensions. These warming relations are driven, among other things, by the fear of a nuclear Iran that unifies many of the countries in the region but also pushes Iran outside. However, the future of the Abraham Accords will be determined following the exhaustion of the Israel-Hamas war. The consequences of the war will have the potential to turn the tide on the regional balance of power and determine the relations between the moderate Suni countries and Israel and the environment for a discourse on a normative change.

Furthermore, developments on other fronts, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the prospects of an Iranian nuclear agreement, and the weakened NPT, will likely affect the Middle East’s geopolitical dynamics. A nuclear deal with Iran is a minefield that is difficult to dismantle. If an agreement is reached, it will not contribute to the stability of the region, and a trend of a regional nuclear arms race is a plausible matter. At the same time, if an agreement is not reached, the security dilemma will increase, as will the possibility of violating norms in the field of unconventional weapons. The NPT review conference in the summer of 2022 in the context of the Middle East WMDFZ issue and the possibility that Egypt and the US will reach an understanding can, on the other hand, strengthen the formal process of establishing a UN Convention on the subject.

For now, however, Middle Eastern countries still appear to be shortsighted about the benefits of regional nuclear security arrangements. Unlike the case in Latin America, (Dawood and Herz 2022), the Middle East’s adherence to major treaties governing WMD is far from universal, as is countries’ cooperation with international institutions and their adoption of nonproliferation norms. This may also explain the failure to promote a WMDFZ through the framework of the NPT, and the toll that the process has taken on other global nonproliferation goals. Thus, the key to stabilizing the Middle East and adopting global norms of nonproliferation is to ensure accountability and responsibility among states to diminish regional hostilities. This can be achieved if the countries realize that a collective regional security mechanism will contribute more to each one’s national security and will reduce dependency on great powers.

While regional peace will not simply emerge from this realization, this understanding could reduce the likelihood and lethality of future armed confrontations. In this sense, Israel can only benefit from being more proactive and engaged in existing international institutions that regulate global security. Thus, ratifying the CTBT will be cheap since Israel already contributes to the treaty’s verification regime. Egypt could contribute by warming up its relations with Israel, and by abandoning its policy that rejects normalization after more than 40 years of formal peace between the states. This relationship has only rarely been translated and diffused into the socioeconomic realm. Iran’s adherence to any form of nuclear agreement has great value; however, for many Middle Eastern states, this would be nullified if Iran erodes regional security through its support for the Houthis, Hizballah, and its involvement in Syria.

Expanding the social, economic, and political ties between states in the region will create more interdependencies between these states and their societies. This, in turn, could also contribute to greater support for collective security concepts and the reinvigoration of the WMD disarmament dialog that would include all regional partners. Finally, scholars and regional research institutions can contribute more knowledge on the conditions, practices, and benefits derived from implementing global arms control norms and pave the way for thinking constructively about it.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

I have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this essay.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nir Hassid

Nir Hassid is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science, Government, and International Relations at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on nonproliferation and the interactions of technology and international relations. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 The “long corridor” refers to Israel’s nuclear diplomacy, which views regional peace as a necessary and preliminary step toward establishing a sustainable NWFZ. Accordingly, Israel would engage in a comprehensive regional dialog based on bilateral negotiations, and through incremental progress that would lay the ground for security cooperation and formal recognition of Israel’s right to exist. In this view, an NWFZ arrangement in the region is the end goal of such a process.