Reza Nasri, an international law expert and Vice-President at the Paiab Institute, has written about the need for Israel’s nuclear disarmament in a note published on his Telegram channel.
Referring to the fact that the United States remains the only country in history to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, Nasri emphasized that Washington has spent decades constructing a narrative aimed at justifying the necessity of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
He warned that although historians have challenged this narrative for years, it continues to be repeated.
Nasri described the United States’ “nuclear hypocrisy” as an ongoing practice, saying that Washington has for decades shielded Israel’s nuclear arsenal from international scrutiny.
The full text of the note is as follows:
Today marks the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The U.S. remains the only state in history to have used nuclear weapons, incinerating a civilian population on an industrial scale. For decades, Washington built a mythology around that act: that Hiroshima was necessary, that hundreds of thousands had to die to save lives, and that no alternative existed. Generations of serious historians have challenged this narrative. Yet it endures because it serves a deeper purpose: preserving the moral authority of the state that unleashed the atomic bomb. But the hypocrisy did not end at Hiroshima. The same government that claims to defend a law-based international order has spent decades shielding Israel’s clandestine nuclear arsenal from international scrutiny. Washington has provided political, legal and diplomatic protection for Israel’s preposterous doctrine of “nuclear ambiguity,” a euphemism for possessing nuclear weapons while refusing to acknowledge possessing them. It is a doctrine that makes a mockery of the global non-proliferation regime. And Israel is perhaps the last regime on Earth that should be entrusted with weapons of mass destruction. This is an apartheid regime driven by a dangerous ethno-supremacist ideology, standing accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice; a regime whose political and military leaders have faced arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity; and a regime increasingly doubling down on expansionism with utter contempt for international law and basic human decency. Yet somehow, the international debate has been completely inverted. For decades, the United States, Israel and their Western allies have convinced much of the world that the existential threat to the world is Iran’s civilian nuclear programme, while Israel’s own nuclear arsenal remains protected by deliberate ambiguity. No international inspection has established that Iran’s enrichment programme was designed to manufacture nuclear weapons. No American intelligence assessment has demonstrated that Iran had made the political decision to build one. Yet this alleged threat became the pretext for decades of economic warfare against the Iranian population, a crime against humanity in its own right, and ultimately for military attacks that have set the entire region ablaze. The greatest achievement of this nuclear deception has been making the possibility of a weapon more frightening than the existence of weapons themselves. Even more astonishing has been the willingness of many Arab governments to accept this inversion. The states most vulnerable to a regional nuclear arms race have spent years demanding restrictions on Iran while treating Israel’s nuclear arsenal as an untouchable subject. Have they forgotten the sea of blood stretching from Lebanon to Gaza? Have they forgotten that Israel is the only regime in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons? Israel’s arsenal is not merely a threat to its neighbors. It is a strategic liability even for its Western patrons. The notorious “Samson Option” represents the nightmare scenario of a nuclear-armed regime contemplating catastrophic retaliation if it believes its existence is threatened. A nuclear-armed Israel is therefore not a source of stability. It is a permanent source of strategic danger, holding the entire world hostage to the calculations of a regime outside effective international control. Hiroshima should force the world to confront a simple question: Who actually possesses nuclear weapons, and who has been allowed to escape accountability for possessing them? The answer has been buried beneath decades of propaganda, double standards and political convenience. That narrative must be shattered. The anniversary of Hiroshima is the moment to say what the nuclear order has spent decades refusing to say: Israel must disarm. And the entire region must commit to this objective.
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