Nuclear Security Conference opens in Washington

'Haaretz' reports that Hillary Clinton has welcomed the Israeli delegation's participation in the 47-nation nuclear security conference. Yes, Israel shares Washington's deep concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions and also about the threat of nuclear terror, we are told. Of course, the fact that Israel is only sending a second rate delegation, which is headed by the Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, is reduced to almost a footnote. No, Hillary and Barack don't have a problem with that and they don't appear to care that Benjamin Netanyahu is not there because he fears that Muslim delegates will demand that Israel give up its nuclear weapons. 

Of course, the whole thing is a farce and a nice starting point in reading about how this farce is unrolling vis-à-vis Iran would be Duncan McFarlane's blog entries on the topic. We might, however, for the purposes of this post content ourselves with, perhaps, his main hypothesis and, yes, they are planning to destroy Iran with sanctions and bombings. There is Obama wheeling and dealing with Hu Jintao and there are many who believe that  Beijing might vote in favour of sanctions against Iran in favour of a truce in the US-Chinese monetary dispute, while there will also be no more missle shield in Europe along with the par for the course blind eye to Russian atrocities in the Caucasus. Yes, it might, indeed, just be that Teheran will soon be really under the cosh.


However, the summit in Washington is about more than just reining in Iran and the "Guardian" informs us that a US study warns us that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are under threat of being stolen by terrorists. Oh, and while the 'Guardian' might tell us that it is a "Harvard report", we might still wonder if it is not, in fact,based on a report from the Langley? Of course, little matter that Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, has assured Obama that the government in Islamabad has sufficient safeguards for its 70-90 nuclear warheads. No, the there is a very real problem for the "free" world here and more than enough reason for the seventh calvary to step up its operations on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line.

So there we have it; the only country on the planet to have actually used nuclear weapons, a country with enough potential to destroy the planet a hundred times over, is getting extremely worried about some terrorist getting his hands on a nuke, and we have Israel possessing between 200 and 400 warheads and not even prepared to admit that it has them. Yes, while I for one would love a world free of nuclear weapons, the hypocrisy stinks. This confrence has nothing whatsoever to do with making the planet free of nuclear weapons, it is all about Washington wheeling and dealing to make sure that it can achieve its strategic objectives.