The United States today tabled a draft Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) at the Conference on Disarmament, triggering responses from delegations which ranged from hoping that this draft would break the stalemate in the Conference to disagreeing with the scope of the draft treaty.
Yes, this is aimed at North Korea and Iran. Mostly Iran at this point. Even though it won't be agreed on, and even if it was it wouldn't be in time to stop these two thug states. But it isn't purely cynical. First of all, if we could get a nuclear weapons-free world, we'd leap at the chance given our conventional superiority. And given our large stocks of warheads, a ban wouldn't hurt us if we needed to make new nukes.
Most importantly, by pushing this treaty we undercut some of the objections by other countries to stopping Iran from going nuclear by holding out a general halt to the production of materials that can be used for bombs. This treaty makes our push to stop Iran not just a move aimed at one state but part of a general global push to stop production of fissile material.
It's nice that we can use the offices of the vaunted international community to help us--for once.
