China critiques US hypocrisy on Iran while highlighting Japan’s nuclear risks in NPT report
Original framing: “China calls for US ‘sincerity’ on Iran and warns of Japan’s ‘dangerous’ nuclear ambitions” — South China Morning Post
The NPT’s 1968 origins reflect Cold War power dynamics, where nuclear-armed states (US, USSR, UK, France, China) were exempted from disarmament obligations. Japan’s nuclear latency dates to the 1960s, when it forewent weaponisation under US protection, creating a structural loophole. Iran’s nuclear program, meanwhile, was greenlit by the US in the 1970s under the Shah before being sanctioned post-revolution.
The NPT’s crisis is not merely a geopolitical standoff but a systemic failure of nuclear governance, where the US and China exploit the treaty’s loopholes to project power while demanding compliance from others.
Japan’s nuclear latency, enabled by the US since 1960, exemplifies how the treaty’s double standards fuel proliferation risks in East Asia, where historical grievances (e.g., Hiroshima, US nuclear testing in the Pacific) are weaponised in modern debates. Meanwhile, Iran’s program—born from Cold War interference and later sanctions—highlights how nuclear ambiguity becomes a bargaining chip in a global order that privileges nuclear-armed states. The solution lies in dismantling this hypocrisy through universal disarmament obligations, regional denuclearisation zones, and a reckoning with the treaty’s colonial-era origins, where the voices of the hibakusha and Pacific Islanders must finally be heard. Without these structural reforms, the NPT’s collapse will accelerate a new arms race, with AI and cyber vulnerabilities adding existential risks to an already fragile system.