"... The more Iran pursues nuclear capabilities, the more Cairo rails against Israel’s Bomb ..."

ArmsControlWonks/ here

"... The more Iran pursues nuclear capabilities, the more Cairo rails against Israel’s Bomb. In diplomacy, as in sports, this is known as a misdirection play: The nuclear threat posed to Egypt by Israel, with whom it signed a peace treaty in 1979, hasn’t changed. The big change in Egypt’s neighborhood has been attempts by Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria to acquire capabilities to make nuclear weapons.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference has now opened in New York. Cairo holds the key to its success or failure. Egypt is in a position to play the spoiler’s role because it chairs both the 118-nation Non-Aligned Movement and the New Agenda Coalition — a group of eight influential states, including Brazil and South Africa. Egypt has given notice that it seeks to mount a campaign at the month-long conference to pressure Israel, a non-party to the Treaty, to cap and reverse its nuclear program.

Cairo has a legitimate beef. When the NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995, member states endorsed a resolution championed by Egypt calling for practical, progressive steps to establish an effectively verifiable zone free of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems in the Middle East. Israel has been a free-rider to the NPT, enjoying the constraints the Treaty imposes on others while remaining an outlier. .........Iran and Venezuela will make a ruckus at the review conference, but they cannot define its success or failure. If, on the other hand, Egypt becomes a ringleader, lining up Arab states to hold the NPT hostage to the behavior of a non-member state, the conference can end poorly. A weakened NPT would then provide more latitude for Iran’s nuclear ambitions and increase hedging strategies elsewhere in the Middle East.

What game will Egypt play? Cairo has a serious security dilemma. It signed the NPT in 1968 and finally ratified the treaty in 1981. Later in the 1980s, it appeared to give up on having a civil nuclear power program. Cairo said little after the discovery of an advanced nuclear program in Iraq and boxed centrifuge parts in Libya. Egypt was part of what the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, called this the “synchronized silence of the Arab world” following Israel’s bombing of the covert Syrian nuclear facility in September, 2007. (During Nasser’s rule, Egypt and Syria forged a short-lived federation. For Syria to seek the Bomb while Egypt’s nuclear options were closed must have been especially galling to Cairo.) Egypt tellingly abstained during the November, 2009 vote on Iranian noncompliance at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors. Meanwhile, other neighbors, including Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel began to move forward with plans for nuclear power plants.

The more Cairo bites its tongue about troubling developments in the Muslim world, the more it amplifies its concerns about Israel’s nuclear program. Egypt is taking precautionary steps to deal with its security dilemma.....

When asked on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on April 12th whether Egypt might feel that it must develop its own nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit replied, “We will not announce ourselves on that possibility now.” Misdirection plays can work smartly, or they can backfire badly. An ugly outcome at the NPT review conference would increase nuclear dangers in the Arab world and beyond, but blaming Israel for this state of affairs would also widen Egypt’s nuclear options.