Stephen K. Mack : I have read Daniel Larison since he was writing for The American Conservative, and was eventually fired! This writer/thinker deserves your attention!
Aug 28, 2025
SKM: Here is his latest essay:
The three European governments risk driving Iran to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Aug 28
France, Britain, and Germany are about to make a colossal error:
The UK, France and Germany were preparing on Thursday to trigger a UN process to reimpose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, European officials have said, in a move that would heighten tensions between the west and Tehran.
The three European governments risk driving Iran to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Even if Iran doesn’t quit the treaty entirely, it is practically guaranteed that their government would no longer cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As an Iranian diplomat said this week, it will make “no sense” for Iran to cooperate with inspectors if the sanctions are put back on. It is likely that Iran would then rebuild and expand their program even more. Using the snapback mechanism is insane, and it makes a new crisis over the nuclear issue more likely rather than less.
Iranian withdrawal from the treaty is a real possibility. Iranian officials have repeatedly warned that Iran would leave the NPT if UN sanctions were reimposed. The Iranian government may conclude that it may as well quit the treaty if it is not going to be permitted to develop its nuclear program in peace as the treaty allows. If Iran is going to be put under such massive sanctions anyway, they have few incentives to remain in the treaty when they aren’t allowed to benefit from it. The Iranian leadership may also decide that withdrawing from the treaty is the only action they can take that will be significant enough to make Western governments rethink their position.
Withdrawal from the treaty doesn’t necessarily mean that Iran will pursue nuclear weapons. As Mark Fitzpatrick and Mark Goodman say in this article, “It is conceivable that Iran could withdraw from the treaty and maintain a policy of nuclear hedging, even as it reconstituted its enrichment program in secret.” Unfortunately, it is a certainty that warmongers in Israel and the U.S. will not see it that way and will likely use Iranian withdrawal as a new pretext for aggression.
Iran would be fully within its rights to withdraw from the treaty if it believes that it is necessary for its national security. The treaty states that a party to the treaty has the right to withdraw “if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” The Iranian government could point to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on their nuclear facilities and the possibility of more attacks in the future as their reasons for withdrawing. Fitzpatrick and Goodman note that Iran’s claim won’t be questioned in the same way that North Korea’s was: “In Iran’s case, such questions are unlikely to be raised, since the “extraordinary events” are obvious.”
It would be ideal if the European governments did not trigger the snapback mechanism and Iran remained in the treaty. There is no good reason to reimpose UN sanctions now, and it will just create more problems for all parties. The British, French, and German governments seem determined to make the situation worse. It was better when these governments were useless spectators. Now they suddenly want to do something on the nuclear issue, and they have landed on the stupidest possible thing to do short of war.
The Iranian government has been open to finding a diplomatic solution, and its reward has been relentless hostility, economic warfare, and bombing. Reimposing UN sanctions could very well be the last straw. The Iranian government might conclude that if it is going to be treated like North Korea no matter what it does it might as well build a deterrent to stop future attacks on their country. If that happens, the moronic hawks that brought us to this point will own the results.
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