By HMGS Palihakkara
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Apr 28 2026 (IPS)

As delegates from 191 countries, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, gathered Monday at UN headquarters for a month of diplomacy at the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the stakes could hardly be higher.

They meet in the shadow of a war of choice, waged by the United States and Israel against Iran—ostensibly to prevent nuclear proliferation. It is a war steeped in tragedy and laced with irony. The human toll and global economic costs speak for themselves.

The irony is starker.

The United States, a principal depositary of the NPT, unilaterally caused the collapse of a UN-authorised agreement it had itself initiated to verify Iran’s non-nuclear status—the JCPOA. Having done that, the US, alongside Israel—a state that rejects the NPT—now bombs a hitherto NPT-compliant Iran to achieve the same end: a non-nuclear Iran.

This oxymoronic irony lies at the heart of America’s war of choice. Waged in the name of non-proliferation, it may accelerate the very outcome it seeks to avoid. By demonstrating that even a state short of nuclear weapons can be subjected to unilateral unauthorised force, Washington risks sending a stark message: survival may depend not on restraint and diplomacy, but on possession of the bomb.

This paradox exposes a longstanding fragility in the global nuclear matrix. Built around the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards regime, it rests on a bargain: non-nuclear states forgo weapons in exchange for security assurances, access to peaceful nuclear technology and good-faith progress towards disarmament.

This system, discriminatory but functional, endures only so long as it is seen as credible. When a treaty-compliant non-nuclear state becomes the target of military action over suspected ambitions, that credibility erodes.

At the centre of this erosion is the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Before the conflict, Iran’s posture was widely understood as “hedging”—developing technical capacity without crossing the weapons threshold.

This allowed Tehran to retain leverage while avoiding the full costs of weaponisation. But hedging depends on a shared understanding: that ambiguity will be tolerated—or at least not punished with illegal use of force.

War shatters that assumption. The lesson is stark: nuclear latency does not deter attack; nuclear possession might. The comparison with North Korea is instructive. Its overt arsenal has largely insulated it from large-scale intervention despite decades of hostility with Washington.

For policymakers in Tehran—and elsewhere—the implication is difficult to ignore. If ambiguity invites vulnerability, clarity in the form of a deterrent may appear rational. Nuclear weapons risk being recast from political liabilities into strategic necessities.

The damage extends beyond Iran. The non-proliferation regime has long depended on the belief that compliance will not be punished. Yet recent history has already weakened that assumption. Ukraine relinquished the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in the 1990s in exchange for security assurances, only to face Russian invasion decades later.

Libya abandoned its programme and soon after saw regime collapse following the US initiated external intervention. These precedents have chipped away at trust.

Against this backdrop, war with Iran reinforces a troubling pattern: states without nuclear weapons appear vulnerable, while those with them appear secure. This is the opposite of what the non-proliferation regime is meant to uphold.

Officials at the IAEA have warned such dynamics could trigger a “domino effect”, with multiple countries reconsidering their options. Across the Middle East and beyond, governments are quietly reassessing their assumptions.

Military aggression also reshapes domestic politics in ways that complicate non-proliferation. External pressure strengthens hardliners while marginalising advocates of engagement. This is not unintended but predictable. Hardliners are less inclined toward compromise and more likely to view nuclear weapons as essential to survival.

The space for diplomacy narrows as nuclearisation gains appeal. War, in other words, transforms not just capabilities but preferences.

There is also a practical limit to military solutions. Airstrikes can damage or even ‘obliterate’ facilities, but they cannot erase knowledge. Scientific expertise cannot be bombed out of existence. Indeed, intervention may accelerate the very processes it seeks to halt by pushing them underground. A programme once visible to inspectors may become more secretive and harder to monitor.

The regional implications are equally concerning. The Middle East is already marked by rivalry and fragile security arrangements. An Iranian move towards nuclear weapons—especially one accelerated by conflict—would likely prompt countervailing responses.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey have both signalled they would not remain passive. The result could be a cascading arms race, turning an already volatile region into a multipolar nuclear environment.

This is a classic security dilemma: one state’s attempt to enhance its security leaves others feeling less secure, prompting reciprocal measures that leave all worse off. By seeking to eliminate a potential threat through unauthorised force, the United States may multiply such threats. Instead of one threshold state, the region could face several.

These dynamics point to a deeper flaw: the belief that military force can resolve nuclear proliferation. Nuclear ambition is not merely technical; it is a political response to insecurity. Bombing addresses symptoms, not causes.

Without addressing the security concerns that drive states towards nuclear capabilities, coercion alone cannot produce lasting results. All successful non-proliferation goals-ranging from NPT to JCPOA- were reached through calculated diplomatic negotiations, not by military means.

Past experience underscores this. Diplomatic agreements, however imperfect, have constrained nuclear programmes. The collapse of the JCPOA removed mechanisms that had limited Iran’s activities. In the absence of a credible diplomatic alternative, military action amounts to little more than a delay—buying time at the cost of increasing long-term incentives to pursue nuclear weapons.

The war also risks reinforcing the perception that international law is subordinate to power politics. If rules can be bypassed by powerful states, weaker ones are unlikely to rely on them. Instead, they may turn to capabilities that cannot easily be neutralised. Nuclear weapons become not just tools of deterrence, but symbols of sovereignty and survival.

Perhaps the most enduring impact will be psychological. States learn from precedent. From Iraq to Libya to Ukraine—and now Iran—a pattern appears: vulnerability invites intervention, while nuclear capability deters it. This conclusion may be uncomfortable, but it reflects a cold logic of international politics. Once such a perception takes hold, it is difficult to reverse.

For this reason, the war may prove a watershed moment not only for Iran but for the global non-proliferation regime. It alters perceptions of risk and security in ways that favour proliferation over restraint. Even states with no immediate intention of pursuing nuclear weapons may begin hedging against a future in which international guarantees appear unreliable.

The tragedy is that a policy intended to prevent proliferation may instead accelerate it. By undermining trust, empowering hardliners and reinforcing deterrence logic, the United States risks achieving the opposite of its stated aim. Even if military action sets back Iran’s programme in the short term, the long-term consequences may be far more damaging.

A more secretive, more determined and more widely emulated pursuit of nuclear weapons would not represent a victory for non-proliferation. It would mark its gradual unravelling—an “own goal” in geopolitical terms.

If the aim of non-proliferation is to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, this conflict points in the opposite direction. It suggests that security cannot be reliably guaranteed by treaties or norms alone, and that in an uncertain world the ultimate insurance policy remains the bomb.

That message will resonate far beyond Iran. Its consequences may shape nuclear choices for decades.

The question the Iran war poses to the world is not polemical but stark: is it a new normal that a depositary state of the NPT and a covert nuclear power not party to the treaty can preclude diplomacy and bomb their way to non-proliferation?

If the current NPT Review Conference in New York, like its predecessor conferences, fails to reach consensus on the way forward for the Treaty’s three pillars—non-proliferation, peaceful nuclear cooperation based on sovereign equality, and disarmament—it will amount to an answer in the affirmative, to that question. This may then signal the onset of the treaty’s terminal decay.

HMGS Palihakkara is a former Sri Lankan Ambassador to United Nations; one time Chair /Member of UNSG Advisory Board on Disarmament; a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel updating the ’Comprehensive Study on Nuclear Weapons’; Advisor to the President of the 1995 NPT Review & Extension Conference.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: UNRWA
 
According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 270 people including children and other non-combatants were killed during intense fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in and around the Nuseirat refugee camp on June 8, in the middle area of the war-torn enclave. More than 600 were reportedly injured with hospitals overwhelmed. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said in a post on X that the Nuseirat camp “is the epicentre of the seismic trauma that civilians in Gaza continue to suffer.” “Seeing shrouded bodies on the ground, we are reminded that nowhere is safe in Gaza”, he said.

By HMGS Palihakkara
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jun 10 2024 (IPS)

Since the eviction of Palestinians from their homeland pursuant to the controversial Balfour declaration of 1917, the quest for regaining Palestinian statehood has continued as a means towards lasting peace and security within and between Israel and Palestine.

The effort straddled two centuries but the issue remained unresolved. It became a core question of peace and security in the Middle East and the world. The so-called rules-based order of the international system that grew out of the carnage of two world wars was unable or unwilling to find a reasonable consensus on this issue as major powers juggled ‘rules-based-justice’ with ‘power-based practice’.

The unresolved conflict thus peaked in atrocious violence in Gaza with Hamas and Israel being accused of things ranging from war crimes to genocide including the brazen massacre of over 200 civilians in a hostage rescue drama over the week end. The heart-rending tragedy in Gaza is therefore obvious but the opportunity embedded therein not so.

In a not- so-strange irony of war, it was the unprecedented human suffering and devastation in Gaza, not the political will of the major powers, that brought back the Palestinian statehood issue to the fore as a new inflection point in building peace among parties to this conflict.

What is new is that the bold joint move by Ireland, Norway and Spain to recognize the Palestine State as a precursor to peace rather than in its aftermath, can set in motion a new dynamic.

It has somewhat shaken the US led conventional Euro-Atlantic posture on the Israeli Palestinian conflict that peaceful and secure two states can only emerge at the end of a bilateral peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.

The question is — will that posture now face a reboot calling for international recognition of two States– first, as a via media to peace between the two nations. Israeli intransigence and the devastation in Gaza has brought the need for this re-sequencing into sharper focus.

It can generate a constructive momentum especially if more European countries join Norway,Spain,and Ireland plus 140 odd other countries of the world. Slovenia has already done that.

Obviously, it is not a big snow ball- at least not yet- but something has started to roll. Norwegian Foreign Minister Eide signalled this when he declared at the press conference that if present double standards continue, it will undermine the ‘rules-based international order’-a rebuke to their ‘hold out’ Western partners who preach human rights to some and protect impunity by others.

These four European countries have taken the first step. Will the United States now re-assert its leadership by taking the next ‘giant step’?.

After all, it was President John Kennedy announcing the other ‘giant step’ his great country took in the last century, who famously said -“ we decide to go to the moon and do other things not because they are easy but because they are difficult”.

This is 21st Century, There is an unprecedented opportunity to follow the European lead to recognize the reality of two states and end the forever-war between an Iron-domed State backed by ‘Western might’ and a hapless and stateless people – the latter being a creation by ‘Western democracies’ themselves. If the US does not seize the opportunity, the opportunists will seize it.

HMGS Palihakkara is former Foreign Secretary, Sri Lanka, former Ambassador to the United Nations, and a one-time chairman of the UN Israeli Practices Committee.

IPS UN Bureau

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