By Eitan Barak

After repeated delays since April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tenth Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference (RevCon) is set to convene in August 2022. Israel’s non-membership has been a hot issue in all NPT RevCon meetings for two decades to the point of being a truly diplomatic predicament and we anticipate no surprises in August: harsh diplomatic pressures will be directed toward Israel to relinquish her alleged nuclear weapons (NWs) stockpile by joining a regional would-be Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (WMDFZ).  As in the past, Israel’s refusal to join the NPT or a WMDFZ entailed limited if any diplomatic costs, and because the 1969 Golda-Nixon “Understating” granting Israel immunity from pressure from the United States to join the treaty[1] has no expiration date, one can ask: What went wrong in the 21st Century?

The answer, we suggest, is to be found in two distinct developments during the 1990s, which converged in the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference:

(a) The Arab states’ decision to alter their approach according to which Israel has no NWs.

The Arabs’ former approach, either a result of an assessment that Israel may have not crossed the nuclear threshold (i.e., the weaponization stage) or, perhaps, a “ploy” meant to eliminate anticipated internal Arab pressure to follow suit, had been considered a major advantage of Israel’s ambiguity policy. A formal Israeli admission ― so goes the rationale ― would force Arab leaders to pursue their own programs given anticipated public pressures. In the late 1980s however, some Arab states, mainly Egypt, did change their minds. [2]

A sign of this change was already visible during the Paris Conference on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (CWs, January 1989), at the end of which the Council of the Arab League issued an unexpected communiqué linking progress on the CW Convention’s drafting process to progress on nuclear disarmament (the onset of the Arabs’ so-called "linkage policy”).[3] A year later, in April 1990, after Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein threatened to use CWs against Israel in response to a supposed Israeli attack against his country, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak presented a plan to establish a regional WMDFZ.[4]

In January 1992, Amr Moussa, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, raised the issue of regional nuclear disarmament in his opening address at the 1992 plenary session of the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) held in Moscow following the October 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. Later, in September 1992, Egypt orchestrated an Arab League Resolution, No. 5232, officially pledging member states to boycott the CWC until Israel joined the NPT, or, at least, announced its commitment to join.[5] Similar statements by Jordanian and Qatari high-ranking officials during the ACRS talks (1992-1994) reflect the demise of the Arabs’ “game of pretense”.[6]

(b) The firm US policy to extend the NPT indefinitely, without a vote.

Unlike global arms control (AC) agreements having indefinite duration, Article X(2) provides that 25 years after the NPT’s entry into force (EIF), a conference would be convened to decide, by majority vote, the treaty’s duration. As the NPT’s EIF was March 1970, renewal was set for the 1995 Five RevCon (the “NPT Review and Extension Conference”). Due to complex legal considerations regarding an additional limited extension, for the U.S. the strongest supporter of indefinite extension, unlimited extension was to come at even higher costs.[7] 

While the US overcame initial objections to an indefinite extension voiced by many states belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement (e.g., South Africa or Indonesia) already before the Conference, Egypt was a different case.[8]

Thomas Graham, the U.S. ambassador charged to ensure indefinite extension, recalled Egypt’s FM Amr Moussa as stating during his visit to Cairo in April 1994 “in the strongest of terms” that “Egypt, although devoted to the NPT, would not support indefinite extension or even a long extension, unless Israel, prior to the conference, took ‘concrete steps’ in the direction of eventual NPT membership”.[9]  The Egyptian stance was supported by other Arab states despite the milder positions expressed in their own bilateral discussions with U.S. representatives.[10]    

Hence, despite numerous discussions by the U.S. and other NPT parties’ senior officials with Egyptian and Israeli officials, the issue was resolved only at the very last moment: the night before the extension was approved.  Egypt had found a golden opportunity to extract significant gains from the international community and had no intention of squandering it. According to the May 11, 1995 Resolution, the parties “call upon all states of the Middle East …without exception, to accede to the Treaty as soon as possible“ (Para. 4)  ―as well as― “to take practical steps...aimed at making progress towards, inter alia, the establishment of an effectively verifiable” WMDFZ and WMD’s [sic] delivery systems. [11]

In retrospect, Egypt’s notable achievement was transforming the Israeli nuclear issue from a bilateral to an Arab-Israeli issue and eventually to an international issue. The “compromise” which allowed indefinite extension without voting was sponsored by the three NPT depositaries:  Israel’s “best friend”, the U.S., the UK, and Russia. All have taken a moral, if not legal, commitment to establish a regional WMDFZ. Given the US pressures, however, Israel, at that time, considered the Resolution an impressive diplomatic success.[12]

As the U.S. had achieved her goal of indefinite extension and had no intention of breaching the 1969 Understanding and jeopardizing Israel, one of her truest allies, it was just a matter of time before Egypt and her Arab supporters realized that they had been cheated. A strong sense of humiliation was inevitable; as such, this resolution’s promotion has become a contested issue at every NPT RevCon held since. Egypt has uncompromisingly waged battles over this issue during the last four NPT RevCons (mainly in 2005, 2010, and 2015) and, since 2018, in the UN First Committee and the IAEA General Conference. These battles as well as Egypt’s substantial gain in the 2010 RevCon go beyond the limits of this short piece. Yet, one thing is assured: the August 2022 venue will serve as another opportunity for her. As the 2020 RevCon’s designated President, Amb. Gustavo Zlauvinen, stated in April 2021 in the wake of his numerous talks with state parties: “... State Parties have also been focused on regional issues – primarily the implementation of the long unfulfilled 1995 resolution on the Middle East. Progress on this issue is essential for many States Parties”.[13]  

Ironically, despite not being an NPT member state, Israel – clearly the most responsible among the four nuclear non-member states vis-a-vis NWs –has paid the highest political price for the treaty’s indefinite extension.

[1] On the understandings forged with every new Administration see, e.g., Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, (New York: Columbia University Press), 1998, p. 337.

[2]  For suggestions regarding the main reason for Egypt’s new approach see, e.g., Levite and Landau, Israel's Nuclear Image: Arab Perceptions of Israel's Nuclear Posture”, (Tel-Aviv: Papyrus) 1994 (Heb.), pp. 78-79. 

[3] See CWCB 4 (May 1989), p. 7.

[4] See CD document no. CD/989, 3. The plan was also presented to the UNGA. See UNGA document no. S/21252; A/45/219.

[5] See CWCB 18 (December 1992), p. 14. In retrospect, all the Arab states have joined the CWC, implying the linkage policy’s failure. As to the motives behind Egypt's decision to lead the assault against Israel’s nuclear program, see, e.g., Feldman Shai, Nuclear Weapons and arms control in the Middle East, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UPS), 1997, p. 221.

[6] See Feldman, Id., p. 212.

[7] For the legal considerations see Thomas Graham, Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law, (Seattle: University of Washington Press), 2002, p.258.

[8] Besides various US gestures to key states, this was achieved by introducing two additional decisions alongside the extension decision. On the ME “Package Deal”, see Daryl G. Kimball and Randy Rydell, “The NPT in 1995: The Terms for Indefinite Extension” ACT Vol. 50(4), (May 2020), pp. 35-36.

[9] Graham, Id.p. 268.

[10] Jayantha Dhanapala, as the Conference President and chairman of the crucial discussions recalled: “This resolution…brought all the Arab countries on board”.  Jayantha Dhanapala, "The 2015 Review Conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: A Review of a Requiem," Global Governance Vol.21(1), (January-March 2015): 1-8, at 4.

[11]  NPT/CONF.1995/32 (Part I), Annex (operative para.5)

[12]  See for instance, Gerald Steinberg, “The Nuclear Deterrence - Israel vs the US”, Nativ, Vol. 50(3), May 1996, pp. 41-46, at p.41 (Heb.).

[13] Emphasis added. Statement by HE Gustavo Zlauvinen, President-designated, in “Promoting a Successful Outcome to the 2021 NPT Review Conference”- Event organized by Austria, Kazakhstan and Switzerland,  April 28, 2021, https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/2021/04/gz_speech_-_promoting_a_successful_outcome_to_the_2021_npt_review_conference_-_28_apr_2021_.pdf, at p.4

Dr. Eitan Barak is a faculty member at the Program in Strategy, Diplomacy, and Security (SDS) at the Shalem College. Prior to joining the Program, Dr. Barak was a long-time member of the faculty of the Department of International Relations and a senior researcher in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Read full bio here.