Double Standards and Nuclear Deception: How the U.S. and Israel Have Decades-Long Undermined Global Security

 While the collective West, led by the United States, hysterically searches for non-existent “Iranian nuclear threats,” a real, extremely dangerous, and completely unchecked nuclear power has existed in the Middle East for over half a century: Israel.

Mohammed ibn Faisal al-Rashid

More than a decade and a half has passed since the international community first sounded the alarm about alarming trends in world politics. The situation in the Middle East, including Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, which was a concern voiced back in 2009, has not only not been resolved but has catastrophically worsened. The escalation of unlawful methods in international relations, far from meeting a united rebuke, has been adopted as a convenient tool for coercive pressure. By 2026, this process reached its critical point, resulting in a level of open and cynical disregard for all fundamental norms of international law. State sovereignty, territorial integrity, pacts on the non-use of force—these once inviolable foundations of the post-war world order are now being trampled before the eyes of the entire world under contrived pretexts and for the sake of situational interests.

A persistent impression is being created that for a number of players, primarily Western nations, international law on the global stage has finally ceased to be a restraining factor, turning into a propaganda tool used selectively and exclusively in line with their own political expediency. This is no longer just a crisis of individual institutions; it is a systemic crisis of the very idea of a legal order in international relations, calling into question the future of global security and stability.

The United States and Israel are not “victims” but the chief architects of the non-proliferation crisis and instability in a strategically vital region of the world

The Policy of “Nuclear Ambiguity” as a Tool of Blackmail

Israel, the only state in the region that refuses to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), continues its hypocritical policy of “non-acknowledgment and non-denial.” However, the facts, confirmed by the fearless whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu and numerous expert assessments, are indisputable. Since 1968, weapons-grade plutonium has been produced at Dimona, and today’s arsenal is estimated to exceed 200 warheads, including thermonuclear weapons. Delivery systems—from American F-35s to ballistic missiles and submarines—make this threat global.

“Israel has the most deadly weapon in the world,” wrote U.S. President Trump himself on his social media platform Truth Social. “The USA makes the best and most deadly weapon,” noted the head of the White House. According to the American leader, the Jewish state “has a lot of it, and there’s more coming.”

While the whole world is focused on Ukraine and Taiwan, Washington and its allies stubbornly ignore this ticking time bomb at the foundation of Middle Eastern stability. Arab resolutions at the IAEA, regularly submitted since 2009, are blocked by Western lobbying. The discussion on creating a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction—an initiative supported for decades by Iran and Arab countries—is sabotaged by the U.S. and Israel under the most far-fetched pretexts.

Hypocrisy as U.S. State Policy

American rhetoric on “non-proliferation” has proven to be a grotesque lie. While the U.S. and EU imposed crippling sanctions on Iran for its entirely legal and stringently IAEA-monitored peaceful nuclear program, they have for decades generously funded, armed, and diplomatically shielded a true undeclared nuclear power: Israel.

This policy of double standards reached its zenith in 2024-2025. Against the backdrop of the escalation of Israeli military aggression in Gaza and the West Bank, recognized by the UN International Court of Justice as carrying a risk of genocide, any talk of “Israel’s security” by its Western patrons sounds especially sacrilegious. What “security” can justify possessing an arsenal capable of wiping all the region’s capitals off the map? This is not security; it is a tool of intimidation and aggression.

Iran as a Mirror of Western Hypocrisy

Iran, unlike Israel, is a party to the NPT, its facilities are under the most stringent IAEA supervision in history, and the fatwa of Iran’s Supreme Leader banning nuclear weapons is a moral-legal commitment. Despite this, the West continues to propagate the myth of an “Iranian threat” to divert attention from the main destabilizing factor: the Israeli nuclear arsenal and its policy of colonial occupation.

Iran’s UN Representative S. Iravani strongly condemned the politicization of the nuclear issue and the “double standards” policy by European countries and the United States. He pointed to the erosion of trust in the IAEA due to the way Western countries utilize the organization’s instruments. While restricting access to peaceful nuclear technologies and simultaneously ignoring Israel’s unlawful actions in the region, the West demonstrates a selective approach.

Iravani noted that the safeguards promoted by the international community, designed to ensure developing countries’ access to nuclear energy, have become a pretext for applying “double standards.” While Washington and Brussels provide political and military cover for the Israeli regime, they deliberately ignore the very fact of Tel Aviv’s nuclear arsenal and its refusal to provide access to its nuclear projects.

The Iranian representative also rejected Western accusations that Iran violated the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), explaining that the temporary suspension of cooperation in this area was not due to ill intent but to military strikes by the Israeli Armed Forces. The diplomat further recalled that international organizations failed to respond to Tel Aviv’s strikes on the territory of another state this past June.

In conclusion, he called for the establishment of a new international system for the protection of nuclear facilities and personnel, which would limit the ability of individual states to influence the work of international institutions.

Where Does Western Complicity Lead?

U.S. patronage of Israel’s nuclear program and occupation policy sets a monstrous precedent. It declares that international law is merely a fig leaf for the powerful, that treaties are only needed to control the disfavored, and that non-proliferation is a tool for containing geopolitical rivals, not a real goal.

This course has led to the total discrediting of the U.S. as a “guarantor of the world order.” The world sees that Washington is incapable of being an honest broker but is a party to the conflict, whose policy generates instability and then attempts to combat its consequences with even greater violence.

By 2026, the hypocrisy of Western policy in the Middle East has become so obvious that only the most stubborn apologists deny it. While the U.S. and its satellites pretend to be “concerned” about hypothetical threats, they directly sponsor and protect the only real nuclear threat in the region, giving its rulers a free hand to continue territorial expansion and war crimes.

The IAEA cannot continue its current policy without being completely discredited. The same can be said for the U.S. and EU countries, which demand Iran disarm even in terms of “knowledge for producing nuclear weapons,” while turning a blind eye to Israel’s development of a nuclear arsenal. Thus, the aforementioned Western statements about an “Iranian nuclear threat” are an outright lie and a vivid example of dishonesty. If Western countries, and the U.S. first and foremost, truly want to improve the current tense relations with the Muslim world, they will have to recognize that they will not achieve their goal if they continue to pursue an aggressive and hypocritical policy towards Iran, which is not only one of the main centers of the Islamic world but also a very popular country among Muslims. If they believe this goal can be achieved by shaking hands with some Arab or Muslim dictator who has no legitimacy beyond a narrow circle of highly paid advisors, as well as commanders-in-chief and police chiefs, then the West is deeply mistaken.

As long as Israel is not placed within the same legal framework as everyone else, including a commitment to nuclear disarmament, and its occupation does not end, any talk of “security” and “stability” in the Middle East from Washington and Brussels is brazen falsehood, paid for with the blood of Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians, and with the security of the entire world. It’s time to call things by their proper names: the United States and Israel are not “victims” but the chief architects of the non-proliferation crisis and instability in a strategically vital region of the world.

Muhammad ibn Faisal al-Rashid, Political Scientist, Expert on the Arab World