Nuclear Blindness  Brian Jones on Iran, the West and the Bomb
It is time for the West to develop a new policy on nuclear
proliferation. The highly partisan Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty of 1968, which allowed only the US, Russia, Britain,
France and China to retain nuclear weapons, has been gradually
eroded, as Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea and, briefly,
apartheid South Africa, have unofficially joined the club. Now
Iran, too, may be trying to develop the bomb, and has threatened
to withdraw from the treaty, as North Korea did in 2003.  Iran’s
determination to acquire the capability to enrich uranium and
process spent reactor fuel in order to obtain plutonium is
beyond doubt. This would enable it to produce fissile material
suitable for nuclear weapons, and the step from there to
building some sort of explosive device would be relatively
small. On the other hand, the American intelligence assessment
that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons appears to be based on
circumstantial evidence – on the princip