UN Conference on Nuclear Proliferation, WMDs in the Middle East Meets in New York

Parties to the UN Conference on Nuclear Proliferation & WMDs in the Middle East, shown above. Israel is the only nation included in the committee’s scope thought to possess nuclear weapons, but it did not participate in the 2022 Conference. Map: Julia Kempton for IR Insider

From Nov. 14 to Nov. 18, representatives of 21 nations in the Middle East met at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City to discuss nuclear non-proliferation and efforts to improve compliance with bans on biological and chemical weapons. 

The 2022 Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction is the third such session to be held by the UN since 2019, as one conference was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2019, then-UNGA Session President Tijjani Muhammad Bande declared “nuclear disarmament…a top priority of the United Nations.” Muhammad Bande noted the Middle East could join Latin America, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia as regions free of nuclear weapons and government-held WMDs. 

However, the issue - then and now - lacked political urgency. 

Despite concern over the quest of certain rogue states (mainly North Korea) to acquire nuclear weapons, and diplomatic conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran over the latter’s prospective nuclear weapons program, nuclear conflict was (and is) often dismissed as an impossibility. Saber-rattling from Vladimir Putin’s regime since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine led President Biden to declare that “[Putin is] not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons,” adding, “[w]e have not faced the prospect of Armageddon [like this] since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

The Conference series traces its roots to the UN’s 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, but it was the early 2000s – which saw weapons of mass destruction employed as a boogeyman to justify foreign intervention in the region – that prompted a more serious consideration of a regional non-proliferation treaty.

Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that is currently thought to possess nuclear weapons (although it has never publicly admitted their existence), but Iran has made significant efforts to build them in the past decade. In the past three decades, both Syria and Iraq have been known to employ biological and chemical weapons against their own citizens (Syria as recently as the last five years, and Iraq mainly in the 1990s). 

While the conference's last three iterations have been spearheaded by Middle Eastern nations (Jordan, Qatar, and then Lebanon), this has not always been the case. A 2017 UN panel on creating a WMD Free Zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East was hosted by the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN and the British American Security Information Council. That council ended with the release of a draft treaty for the establishment of a WMDFZ in the Middle East, and the creation of roundtable discussions (in 2018), which eventually led to the 2019 Conference. 

Twenty-one regional member states sent representatives, as did China, France, Russia, and the UK as observers. Israel, Comoros, and Somalia were absent. They met with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OCPW), and the Biological Weapons Convention’s Implementation Support Unit. The Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs also spoke during the three-day conference. The Conference consisted of three general debates, a summary by Kuwait of the 2022 working committee's progress, and four thematic debates, spread across a total of seven meetings. 

The UN Headquarters Conference Room III, where deliberations took place, as seen during a press conference. Photo: United Nations. 

The ‘core obligations’ of a potential treaty, as they stand, include “the total absence of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction from the region of the Middle East” (UN A/Conf.236/2022/3, 22) and that “[t]he zone treaty should include obligations for State parties not to carry out research on, develop, manufacture, produce, stockpile, test, possess, acquire, station, transfer, transit, or use or threaten to use nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, other weapons of mass destruction or any fissionable source material nor to assist, encourage, induce or authorize, directly or indirectly, others to undertake any of these activities anywhere,” (UN A/Conf.236/2022/3, 23). 

Furthermore, “members of the Conference expressed deep concern about the two consecutive failures of the Review Conferences held in 2015 and 2022 as well as the failure of the Fourth Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to Review the Operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, in 2018” (UN A/Conf.236/2022/3, 34), a list of criticisms whose length belies the inefficacy of most regional nonproliferation and WMDFZ efforts over the past decade.

Iran’s state-run media and government have repeatedly blamed Israel as the reason for the WMD-free zone’s failure. Israel, for its part, has refused to participate in the proceedings, saying they fail to take into account its national security and a culture of non-compliance with existing treaties in the region. 

An earlier iteration of the Middle East WMD/NNP conference series fell apart in 2012 amid tensions between Israel and occupied Palestinian territories, and the fallout from the Arab Spring. The UN again challenged Israeli possession of nuclear weapons under the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty earlier this month, which Israel has never signed.

Syria has arguably hindered the Conference’s progress through repeated criticisms of the OPCW structure and its “hostility”, presumably meant to distract from OPCW’s accusations that Bashar Al-Assad’s regime committed mass atrocities in the Civil War. According to one supplementary document submitted by the Syrian Arab Republic this year, the OPCW collaborated with “terrorists” such as the internationally recognized humanitarian group White Helmets.

Kuwait, which headed the 2021 conference, has nominally voiced full support for the non-proliferation and WMD-free zone program. This could be in part due to Kuwait’s historic experiences and wariness regarding WMDs following the 1990 invasion by Iraq. 

Qatar has similarly taken a firm stance in favor of a WMD-free zone and, in 2022, signed the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). However, with an enforceable regional treaty years in the future, it is also true that it is much easier for a country like Kuwait or Qatar, which have no nuclear weapons, to agree to their absence in theory than to swear to it in geopolitical practice. 

Lebanon’s Jeanne Mrad, the conference’s chairperson, admitted at the end of the session that “We are fully aware that the journey to reach our objective is a very challenging one, but I am convinced that with a strong political will and commitment, we can achieve progress with collective dedication, wisdom and hard work.” Another session is scheduled for November 2023, again in New York. 

Until then, a working committee is tasked with drafting “(a) glossary of terminologies; and (b) general principles and obligations for a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.”