Azerbaijan, Baku, March 31 / Trend , U.Sadikhova/
The threat of the Arab countries to acquire nuclear weapons if Israel does not provide data on its nuclear program speaks about the desire to develop Arabic atom. However, experts do not believe that this will lead to the rapprochement of the Arab-Iranian positions in opposition to Israel.
"Most Arab states at least those big heads of Arab states wish to have nuclear capability. They have wished to have for long-long time but due to the international and political bargaining they have been postponing this wish. Now Iran is somehow is step forward they see a good reason to bring this up and compare themselves," Jalil Roshandel, an American expert on weapons of mass destruction, told Trend .
At the last summit in the Libyan city of Sirte, the Arab leaders reminded the international community to acquire nuclear weapons if Israel does not join the International Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and does not adhere to the safeguards regime introduced by the IAEA, the Aljazeera website reported, citing diplomatic sources.
Heads of Arab States agreed on the need to adopt a unified Arab position on the issue of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and urged the international community to exert pressure on Israel to ratify the NPT at the upcoming conference on the revision of the Treaty, to be held in New York in May.
Arab countries are concerned about Israel's possession of 200 nuclear warheads and the absence of IAEA supervision on nuclear reactor in the Israeli town of Dimona, and therefore, demanded the NPT conference participants to introduce the comprehensive IAEA safeguards to the Israeli nuclear facilities.
A similar requirement to the international community - to inspect Israel's nuclear capabilities - was made by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who opposes the imposition of UN Security Council sanctions on Tehran because of Iran's nuclear program.
The difference in the concerns of the Arabs over Iran's nuclear program from the Israeli is that Iran is a party to the NPT, English-language edition The Nation, published in the UAE, wrote.
Analysts believe that the Arab initiative to develop nuclear weapons in the region as a reaction to Israel's refusal to participate in the NPT can be supported by Iran. An Iranian expert on international relations, Hasan Behishtipur, believes that Iran will agree to participate in the treaty of 18 Arab countries to save the Middle East from the nuclear weapons because it does not want the beginning of a nuclear race in the region.
However, such an agreement can be effective only after the participation of all Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, Behishtipur, executive director of the Iranian TV channel Al-Alem, broadcasting in Arabic, told Trend .
Pro-American Arab states - Saudi Arabia and Egypt - are concerned about Iran's refusal to cooperate with the UN Security Council over nuclear capabilities, which, according to the West and Israel, aims to build an atomic bomb. Analysts say that the fears of the Arab countries are associated with the possibility of a new regional war and its consequences for Iran's neighbors in the Persian Gulf.
Even if Iran accepts the Arab initiative, for country it will not be urgent, and does not intend to focus on this, according to professor at the University of East Carolina Roshandel.
"For Iran, the statements by the Arab countries to acquire nuclear weapons do not contain any threat. Iran knows that the agreement or disagreement of the Arabs [on nuclear weapons] is a political issue, Roshandel said. Iran, rather, focuses on resolving the dispute [with the United Arab Emirates] around three islands in the Persian Gulf, because actions towards the three islands, even if it is rhetorical it may have bearing on the relations between Iran and its neighbors."
Roshandel sees the reason of such statements by the Arab leaders in the desire of Arabs to develop nuclear technology, and therefore, it is not excluded that in the Middle East can be created similar nuclear cooperation, as previously proposed by Turkey and Iran.
Nevertheless, despite the coincidence of the positions of Arab states and Iran and Turkey in the issue of cleansing the region from the nuclear weapons, analysts do not see this as the prospects for a nuclear alliance between these countries.
Professor Raymond Tanter, who formerly served in the National Security Council of the U.S. Administration, considers it has no prospects of coming into being, because the unannounced nuclear capability of Israel with its strategic doctrine of ambiguity is not a greater threat to the Arab world than a yet to be developed nuclear weapon of the Iranian regime.
"The unannounced nuclear capability of Israel is not a greater threat to the Arab world than a yet to be developed nuclear weapon of the Iranian regime, Tanter , President of Iran Policy Committee at the University of Michigan told Trend . Tehran is the unstated enemy that needs to be kept close to the Arab world for fear that the Iranian regime will do harm to the Arab states".
Still the countries of the region have no preconditions for a unified position on the nuclear issue.
"However we can not conclude from this argument that there will be an Arab-Iran-Turkey triangle, coalition because they have some common grounds, but still differ from the nuclear issue," security expert Roshandel said.
"Iran, Turkey and Arabs enter in some kind rapprochement will not be tolerated by Israel and it will be considered a step towards creating coalition entire Israel. Any kind of rapprochement regard the nuclear issue Arab states, Turkey and Iran is not improbably, second it is a threat to the security of the Middle East and make Palestine-Israeli peace even more impossible, because Israel will feel more threaten and that will also give to further arms competition and arms build up in the Middle East," Roshandel believes.