I think it is important to look at WMDs in the ME, and the efforts to eliminate them, within the context of regional security.

The ME has been plagued with a multitude of conflicts, some of which has become chronic with huge humanitarian cost. Naturally, these conflicts have a spill-over effect into neighboring states and beyond, such as refugees, terrorism, and illicit trade in arms and weapons. We have all followed with varying degrees of concern conflicts and wars such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, the abandoned conflict in Yemen, and of course the decades long chronic Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the occupation of the Palestinian home-land. These conflicts and others in the ME resulted in millions of refugees and displaced civilians, anger that led to militancy and terrorism or freedom-fighting depending on where you stand from the parties to the conflict, in addition to wasting the countries’ economic resources that would have been, otherwise, directed to social and economic development.

Let me first start by stating the sometimes neglected basic fact that conflict in the ME is not the natural order of relations or an outcome of the nature of the people there, but it due to the nature of the international order that is power-based and not rules-based as some would claim.

Secondly, there are a number of reasons for this conflict-prone environment, but they mostly stem from one fact, namely the absence of a regional security and arms-control structures in the ME.

In spite of a number of attempts at constructing a regional security structure, these efforts failed for two main reasons.

The first, is that any security architecture is naturally based on cooperative security and confidence building, while most, if not all, governments in the region apply a zero-sum approach to their national security, therefore, long-term cooperation and trust cannot be maintained among these states.

In this environment, we have shifting and competing regional centers of power. Current cooperation and agreements are merely short-term alliances, usually directed against other states.

The second reason is the disruptive role of the external powers in managing and resolving these conflicts. Contrary to what these powers claim, they bring to these conflicts their own interests which mostly clash with the interests of the region. They would protect governments in the region that are involved in the conflicts and causing massive human suffering, as long as these governments continue to provide access to raw materials and are buying 100 s of billions worth arms and weapons from them. Obviously, regional cooperation and arms control structures are not in the best interests of these super powers.

The hundreds of billions that were spent on buy arms and weapons from the weapon exporting states did not provide security to the region but only exacerbated the arms race and eroded confidence among the regional players. The introduction of WMDs in this volatile mix is not only dangerous to the region but has serious ramifications for international peace and security.

The motivations and drivers for the acquisition of WMDs dates back to the sixties of the twentieth century, when the Arab States realized that Israel was developing a military nuclear program. This heightened the threat perception of the Arab States, and it was clear to them that they had to react.

The Arab states realized that they cannot accept or coexist with nuclear weapons in the hands of Israel, their main adversary at the time. Israel’s monopoly of nuclear weapons would aggravate the security and military imbalances in the ME. They also realized that to develop their own nuclear weapons is politically and financially costly and dangerous, not to mention accelerating the regional arms race. There was no NPT at the time, so that option was theoretically available to them, but they decided against it. The reasonable course of action to them was to resort to the international community to draw attention to the inherent dangers, and to exert pressure on Israel in order to reach a regional agreement to rid the region of these menacing weapons. Therefore, when Egypt and Iran introduced, in 1974, the zone initiative to the General Assembly, the rest of the Arab states seized the opportunity and adopted the zone concept as a way out of the regional nuclear proliferation dilemma.

Israel’s nuclear weapons became a driver and an incentive for the Arabs and Iran to seek to eliminate it through an arms control arrangement and a security structure, namely a “Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the ME”.

Over the following years and decades, the states of the region realized that their efforts at multilateral disarmament forums did not provide any serious progress if any at all. The Israeli nuclear weapons became a driver for proliferation to counter the power imbalance in the region. A new thinking evolved in certain camps that if nuclear weapons are a guarantor for Israel’s security it should be also good for their security. Others also thought of developing other WMDs, particularly chemical weapons, to counter the military imbalance. We have seen that in Iraq and Syria. When chemical weapons were used by Iraq against Iran and against its own people, the rest of the Arab States realized the urgent need to eliminate all WMDs and not only Nuclear weapons. Led by Egypt, the Arabs modified or expanded their initial initiative to be A Nuclear Weapons and other WMDs Free Zone in the Middle East.

With the launch of the peace process in 1991, the security and political environment changed, and for the first time a large number of Arabs and Israel sat together within the multilateral track of the peace process to discuss for the first time security cooperation and Confidence building measures. This was within the Arms Control and Regional Security Working Group (ACRS). Within the coming three years, the ACRS failed and stopped.

We have now different narratives explaining the reasons for failure, an Arab narrative, an Israeli narrative, and a supporting American narrative, and each narrative blames the other party. It is counterproductive to go into this blame game or repeat the accusations. Unfortunately, this obscured the fact that the ACRS managed to agree on a number of CBMs and CSBMS that should have been considered a breakthrough, and were discarded and forgotten overtime.

The 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, adopted the initiative of a “Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction in the ME”, and the zone became a permanent item on its agenda. Yet Israel refused to move forward on the issue. The 2010 Review Conference adopted a final document that requested the UNSG to hold a conference in 2012 to start a process that would lead to the creation of the zone, but the process again was sabotaged and Israel insisted with the support of the US and UK, that the objective of the 2012 conference should be changed to deal with all regional security issues. That was not the mandate given by the Review Conference, and the process once again failed.

This situation exploded in the 2015 Review Conference and led to its failure to reach an agreed upon final document, and accusations were exchanged over who caused this failure.

The Arab States, in their frustration, felt that they had to take matters into their hands, and in December 2018, the General Assembly adopted a new decision, based on an Arab Group draft resolution, to entrust the UN secretary-general to convene an annual conference, beginning in 2019, “until the conference concludes the elaboration of a legally binding treaty establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction”.

The first conference was held in 2019, and the second conference in 2021 with the participation of 22 Arab States and Iran, while Israel and the US rejected the Decision of the General Assembly, and boycotted the conference.

It is important to sum up the situation and take a step back and evaluate where the region is.

Over the last 15 years the Iranian nuclear file took center stage, with ups and downs, causing condemnations and provoking sanctions on Iran and on secondary parties. Finally, the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 reached what I would call a win–win situation and the JCPOA was signed. But Iran also in those years became a regional player in conflicts and causing anger among many Arabs. Iran used sectarian affiliations to support groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. It accumulated and developed missiles that caused alarm in many quarters. A lot of efforts are being exerted to limit Iran’s missile capabilities, while totally ignoring the missiles arsenals in 9 regional actors. The biggest and most sophisticated of them is in Israel.

The concept of the WMDFZ in the ME survived 5 decades of inaction. The main reason behind that is that this proposed zone provides a comprehensive regional approach to the issue of WMDs proliferation, and avoids the selective and biased approach of dealing with states separately from the regional architecture.