Sir, Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat (letter, November 26) seems to me to engage in tiresome moral equivalency regarding Iranian nuclear ambitions and the obligations of the UK and the US to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

He may castigate the five recognised nuclear states for not instigating unilateral nuclear disarmament (for that is what he is effectively advocating), but that does not mean that they contravene the NPT. Iran, on the other hand, seems to be enacting a policy that pushes the envelope of what is allowed by the NPT and may yet contravene that treaty.

Moral equivalency also falls down when we compare the command and control arrangements of the NPT-recognised nuclear states to Iran’s. In a country where foreign policymaking is akin to reading tea leaves, we all have good reason to fear a nuclear-armed Iran.

Lastly, Sir Joseph is in error regarding the nuclear policy of the Bush Administration. The “new nuclear warheads” he mentions are not on the cards: I understand that Congress has stopped their funding. Even if research on these warheads were to continue, the notion that they would feature in a first-use, pre-emptive manner is debatable in the extreme.

This issue is more complex than Sir Joseph would have us all believe.

Yours faithfully,
JOHN B. SHELDON,
(Leader, Space Security and the Military Uses of Outer Space Programme),
Centre for Defence and International Security Studies,
The Court House, Northfield End, Henley-on-Thames,
Oxfordshire RG9 2JN.
jsheldon@cdiss.org
November 26.

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