Mr President, Since you assumed the presidency in 2009, your choices in managing American foreign policy and US relations with the world have been based on diplomacy and negotiations, in contrast to your predecessor's approach based on power and war. Your approach was also implemented on Iran and its nuclear programme, which you considered a threat to the United States and its allies. Accordingly, you extended your hand to Iranian leaders, through years of hard and complicated negotiations. It is to your credit that you insisted on negotiations amid instigations from Congress that wanted to undermine the negotiation process by imposing further sanctions on Iran, and against outside interference as well, when Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to mobilise Congress against negotiations. Fortunately, on 2 April in Lausanne, the P5+1 group and Iran announced it had reached a framework agreement on a number of principles that could develop into a permanent agreement by 30 June 2015. On the evening of the announcement, in your televised address, you considered the agreement to be “historical” because of what Iran has agreed upon reducing by two thirds 19,000 centrifuges that could be used to produce material to fuel bombs. Also, it agreed to not enrich uranium more than 3.67 per cent (a much lower level than required for a bomb) for at least 15 years. The agreement also stipulated that the core of the reactor at Araq, which officials feared most in terms of potential for making a weapon, would be dismantled. All this would be supported by Iran's compliance, accompanied with robust and intrusive inspections and transparency. As a result of this agreement, you concluded that it would forestall, for at least 10 years, Iran's capacity to build a nuclear bomb. Thus, one of the choices once open, namely a destructive war that would engage the United States again in conflict in the region, has been also foreclosed. As you know, among the concerns of people in the Middle East was the possibility of military attacks against Iran that would have unknown repercussions on the region. Hence, we can say that the people of the region can be satisfied in the case of this option being removed. However, they still will have their own concerns about the political consequences of understandings between Iran and the United States coming at their expense. The broader issue that concerns the region is the expectation that you will extend US interests to include the interests of the region's people and face up to the existential threat they face from what Israel assuredly possesses, and not hypothetically, as in the case of Iran: a nuclear arsenal of 200 to 400 nuclear warheads. To face this threat, Egypt, in the early 1990s, supported by Arab countries, suggested making the Middle East a zone free of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, the United States and most of its allies ignored this suggestion. Furthermore, you claimed that if Israel possesses nuclear weapons it as a democratic government that will not use them, which is a conclusion and assertion we could have a lengthy discussion on. Regardless of this position, the United Nations in a number of successive resolutions supported making the Middle East a zone free of nuclear and mass destruction weapons. During the revision conference of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995, a resolution “on the Middle East” was adopted when the General Assembly recalled all its resolutions that supported the consensus on establishing a free nuclear zone in the Middle East. It was not implemented. This was regarded in Egypt and the Arab world as a grand deception that recalled other deceptions when United States pressured Egypt into joining the NPT on a promise that it would persuade Israel to join the treaty, which didn't happen. The United States went further when the UN adopted a resolution in 2010 inviting an international conference in Helsinki in December 2012, and appointed a facilitator to prepare for the conference. At the last moment the United States frustrated the conference in the interests of Israel. By the end of this month, April, a conference for the revision of the NPT will be convened in New York. Certainly Egypt and the Arab countries will renew their call to start a series of arrangements to make the region one free of nuclear weapons. Now, as the US and its allies have neutralised the Iranian nuclear threat, the Arab people are hopeful that you will show the same interest in their security and in what Israel's nuclear arsenal represents for the security and stability of the region. We are hopeful that the United States will adopt a supportive position to revive the Helsinki conference and to start measures and arrangements for establishing a zone free of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In this context, I would like to recall your speech in Prague in 2009, on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. In this speech you promised you would work hard to make the world free of nuclear weapons. This noble goal will not be reached without making the sensitive and strategic region of the Middle East free of nuclear weapons. The writer is executive director of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs.
