The nuclear apartheid

On 13 June 2025, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, striking supposed nuclear facilities besides civilian areas and even a state broadcasting station. Days later, the United States joined the assault, bombing—and ‘obliterating’, in the words of US President Donald Trump—what it claimed were Iranian nuclear development sites. Hundreds of Iranians were killed, and the region was on the brink of a full-scale war.

If the Middle East crisis has revealed something even more dangerous than the exchange of bombs and missiles, it is the collapse in slow-motion of the global nuclear order. The United States of America, which has long posed as the superpower defending international security, has instead laid bare the hypocrisy and injustice at the core of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime.

Iran, let’s remember, is a signatory to the NPT. It has allowed periodic inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite frequent accusations to the contrary and political sabotage. Israel, in contrast, has never signed the NPT and is widely believed to possess an advanced nuclear arsenal, developed in secret and shielded from global scrutiny by a long-standing policy of ‘nuclear ambiguity’.

Now, both Israel and its patron, the US, have bombed a country that was formally cooperating with the NPT system. This isn’t just an act of aggression—it’s a death knell for the very idea of nuclear equality under international law.

The NPT, signed in 1968, was founded on three pillars: preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, promoting disarmament, and ensuring the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

In theory, it promised a world without nuclear weapons; in practice, it institutionalised a global hierarchy. Only five countries—the US, Russia, the UK, France and China—were allowed to possess nuclear arms. The rest were expected to abstain, with the vague assurance that the nuclear haves would one day disarm.

That disarmament never came. Instead, those five powers have modernised their arsenals and expanded delivery capabilities. Meanwhile, new nuclear states—India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel—have emerged outside the treaty framework, with some receiving tacit approval or outright support from the US.

The recent US strikes on Iran mark a chilling moment in this long saga of double standards. For decades, Washington has played nuclear policeman, dictating who may possess what kind of weapons. But its criteria have nothing to do with legality, transparency or international norms—it is all about strategic alignment.

The US often treats nuclear proliferation not as a security risk but as a political litmus test. Friendly countries get a free pass. Adversarial regimes—like Iran, Iraq, Libya or North Korea—face coercion, sanctions or even war. This selective enforcement is a glaring feature of American foreign policy.

Iran’s case illustrates this perfectly. Despite repeated IAEA assessments finding no definitive evidence of a weaponisation programme in recent years, Iran has been treated as a rogue state. The US unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) in 2018, despite Iran’s compliance at the time.

Then came economic warfare, cyberattacks like Stuxnet, the assassination of nuclear scientists, and now direct military strikes. All this while, Israel’s undeclared arsenal—up to 90 nuclear warheads, as per SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) estimates—has been exempt from discussion—and not a peep about this in Western media.

The double standard is not lost on the rest of the world. Many in the Global South view the NPT as a colonial instrument, a treaty that locks in the power of a nuclear elite while punishing aspirants. It couldn’t be more stark: a non-nuclear weapons Iran is bombed for suspected violations while Israel receives billions in financial and military aid besides diplomatic and media cover.

The fact that the United States joined Israel in the strikes sends an even clearer message: the NPT does not protect those who follow it, it punishes those who challenge the hegemony of its enforcers.

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What if other global powers were to start playing by the same rules? Imagine a future where China, alone or in coalition with Russia, declares that a US-backed country’s nuclear energy programme poses a threat to regional stability. What if they launch pre-emptive strikes on South Korea’s nuclear infrastructure, or target Taiwan on the pretext that it is secretly pursuing weapons? What if they bomb Saudi or Japanese nuclear facilities, arguing that these states are only shielded from scrutiny because of their US alignment? What happens when China and Russia begin to treat American allies the way the US and Israel treat their adversaries?

This is not mere speculation. China has already expressed dissatisfaction with the NPT’s bias and has invested heavily in building up its own nuclear arsenal. Russia, too, has been seeking ways to challenge Western hegemony on strategic and moral grounds.

If these states were to adopt Washington’s selective enforcement model, the result will be a brutal breakdown of any remaining nuclear restraint. The NPT’s legal and moral authority would be shattered. Every nuclear-aspiring state would race to arm itself on the basis or the pretext that treaties protect no one, only nuclear weapons deter attacks.

Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the Middle East has long served as the bedrock of its aggressive regional posture. Under the so-called ‘Begin Doctrine’, Israel reserves the right to pre-emptively strike any country it suspects of developing weapons of mass destruction.

This doctrine led to the bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and Syria’s suspected nuclear facility in 2007. Iran has been under similar threat for over a decade. But what justifies Israel’s monopoly? If existential threats and a hostile neighbourhood are legitimate grounds to develop nuclear weapons, why does that logic not apply to Iran, which has endured sanctions, sabotage and now airstrikes?

Why should any country trust in treaties or inspections when compliance offers no protection and defiance is rewarded? Saudi Arabia has already hinted in 2023 that it will pursue nuclear weapons if Iran acquires them. Egypt, too, has voiced concerns over Israel’s opacity. A Middle East with multiple nuclear powers is a nightmare scenario that the current policy trajectory risks making real.

The moral and legal erosion of the NPT regime also raises the question: who gets to decide which nations can have the ultimate weapon? If the answer is just the US and allies, then the NPT is not a treaty but a licence for domination. Also, if bombs fall on states trying to play by the rules, the incentive for others to seek their own deterrent, by any means possible, only increases.

Iran has now signalled it may withdraw from the NPT, citing ‘extraordinary events’ that have jeopardised its national security. Under Article X of the treaty, such a withdrawal is legal with three months’ notice. If Tehran does follow through, it will not be the first—North Korea exited the NPT in 2003—but Iran’s exit may be the most consequential. A world in which countries abandon international law in favour of self-help nuclear deterrence is a world on the edge of catastrophe.

(Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden)