I’ve been taking a blog break, but this one has my dander up.

The Washington Times created a tempest in a teapot with a very silly front-page “exclusive” today. It’s exclusive, all right. The article distorts a quote from Rose Gottemoeller to the effect of, the U.S. would like to see everyone in the NPT:

“Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea … remains a fundamental objective of the United States,” Gottemoeller told the meeting, which hopes to agree on an agenda and plan to overhaul the treaty at a review conference next year.

This is not exactly earth-shattering news. It’s the logical entailment of seeking a world without nuclear weapons. “World” would seem to indicate “everyone.” Now, it’s a safe bet that of the four states mentioned by Gottemoeller, North Korea is a lot higher on the list of America’s concerns than Israel. It’s also a safe bet that none of the four states will be joining the NPT anytime soon — rejoining it, in North Korea’s case.

Yet somehow, the Times would have us read these unobjectionable remarks as foreshadowing a demand upon Israel in particular to “come clean” about nuclear weapons, i.e., abandon its stance of “nuclear opacity,” which is designed to avoid unduly provoking the neighbors. Or perhaps they hint at coercing Israel into a Middle East Nuclear-Weapons Free Zone, which is something quite different — and something nobody outside of Riyadh imagines possible. The article makes much hay of the Nixon-Meir understanding of 1969, which Jeff discussed here awhile ago.

Let’s just calm down, already. This is an exercise in free association, not reporting.

Bottom Line

Everyone gets worked up about Israel’s nuclear status because, let’s face it, nuclear weapons are a status thing as much as — or even more than — a security thing. But no one should expect rapid changes. I can’t do better than to quote George Perkovich’s comments at the recent Carnegie Conference:

I also think it’s not constructive to kind of like call out and talk about Israel as having nuclear weapons and that, you know, people ought to come clean and so on. Seems to me the issue is ultimately of disarmament is you take unsafeguarded fissile materials and you try to make it all safeguarded. Whatever form it was in, you try to get it to a form where it’s monitored, it’s accounted for, and it’s clearly not weapons. Israel has unsafeguarded fissile materials. That’s known. We ought to be having a discussion about how you would verify, you know, and monitor all of these stockpiles over time. And it seems to me that can be constructive.

But the most important thing is it seems kind of – and I wouldn’t be defensive about it, but that’s why I’m not in the government – is you invite a regional discussion about this issue. How would we create a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East? And you invite all of the states in the region, and you have the little placards there for Iran, for Saudi Arabia, so on and so forth – and Israel. And I guarantee you, Israel will show up and other seats will be empty. And at that point you say, well, gee, there isn’t that much to talk about. We can’t solve any problems if the states that are needed to solve this problem won’t even come into a room with each other, let alone recognize their existence or have relations with them, let alone have peace treaties. And it seems to me that gets to the nub of the issue, which is you’re not going to get a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in a region where people don’t recognize each other’s right to exist. But I could be wrong.

That, it seems to me, is where the matter stands.

Update: If anybody is still agitated over this, the Jerusalem Post has a chill pill.

Update 2: It’s unfortunate that this sideshow has distracted from the real news, which is the success of the NPT PrepCom. That’s what the story should have been about in the first place.

Further updates: Last week, the Opinionator feature at nytimes.com gave this post of the honor of some attention. Later, Amir Oren of Ha’aretz wrote about this tsunami in a test tube, a tempest in a heavy-water teapot. Now, Avner Cohen and George Perkovich have weighed in with their own take on the story.

Further, further update: Somehow, I missed Laura Rozen’s take on this story.