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Egypt's campaign to pressure Israel on the nuclear issue, a firmly established dynamic in the weeks leading up to the NPT Review Conference (RevCon) and during the discussions that took place for close to four weeks in May, ended up overshadowing the RevCon final document. The final document, adopted by consensus, reflects Egypt's relatively successful campaign to force the US to accept its agenda for starting discussion on a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) and for singling out Israel in the nuclear realm. Egypt stood by its threat to block consensus on any final document of the RevCon if the US did not adhere to its demands.

The US agreement to the consensus document is certainly not an endorsement of the Egyptian agenda, rather a reflection of the fact that it succumbed to Egyptian pressure. The US was vulnerable to this pressure due to its strong interest that unlike the previous review conference in 2005, this conference not be pronounced a "failure." The serious US reservations to singling out Israel by name, especially while refraining from any specific mention of Iran, were clarified in strong statements issued by the administration almost immediately after the document was released. National Security Advisor Jim Jones "deplored" the situation and Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher noted that singling out Israel would "seriously jeopardize" US efforts to persuade Israel to attend the conference on the establishment of a weapons of mass destruction free zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East.

Iran succeeded in its aim of not being named specifically by the conference document. The tough stance set forth by Secretary of State Clinton in her opening speech ended with a consensus document that reflected none of her passionate determination. Clinton had claimed emphatically that Iran is the "only country represented in this hall that has been found by the IAEA Board of Governors to be currently in noncompliance with its nuclear safeguards obligations – the only one." In that case, what explains the decision to omit specific mention of this dangerous proliferator? In light of the strongly worded IAEA report on Iran released a mere three days after the close of the RevCon, there is no ready explanation for the concession that all the members of the NPT made to Iran, or for why it was not considered preferable to have a final document that mentioned Iran by name, even at the cost of "consensus minus Iran".[1] The US has repeatedly advocated isolation of Iran, and naming Iran's non-compliance in the final document would surely have served this goal. Moreover, in the first week of the conference, when consensus seemed like it might be an elusive goal, the US had entertained the idea of lowering the bar of "success" to something less than consensus. At the time, US special representative for nuclear nonproliferation Susan Burk said that what the US was looking for was "broad agreement on the importance of the NPT to international and regional security." Another notable and quite problematic omission from the final document was any mention of Syria, suspected of working on a military nuclear program and not cooperating with the IAEA, as clarified by the IAEA report on Syria that was released at the same time as the Iran report.

How should these dynamics be understood from Israel's perspective? The first point is that in reality, if Iran's nuclear ambitions would be effectively confronted outside the framework of the NPT – the only viable possibility for conceivably achieving this goal – then the omission of Iran's name in the final document would not be that significant, beyond the stark hypocrisy that it reflected. The same of course is true regarding the specific mention of Syria. The problem is that the international community is proving unable to confront either Iran or Syria – or North Korea – with the necessary determination in the international political arena.

Aside from the fact that Israel was named specifically – and it is noteworthy that the mention of Israel, as opposed to India and Pakistan, was included in the section of the document entitled "conclusions and recommendations for follow-on actions" rather than only in the initial declarative clauses – the major concession to Egypt was inclusion of the idea that a WMDFZ conference be convened in 2012. Significantly, however, the conference must be convened "on the basis of arrangements freely arrived at by the States of the region," and perhaps even more important is that the idea of establishing a regional forum for discussion of WMD in the Middle East is not in itself a negative development. Rather than projecting a self-defensive attitude, Israel's challenge in the face of this emerging agenda is to try to frame the idea according to what it views as the best way to conduct this type of discussion. Israel could emphasize the need to revisit the experience of the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) dialogue of the early 1990s. Dialogue would have to encompass all states in the region – including of course Iran – in a meaningful way. In light of current deteriorating conditions in the Middle East, initial discussion – like in ACRS – would have to focus on confidence and stability building measures. It must be recognized that there is no way that this would be a short term process.

Reflecting on the final results of the NPT RevCon, the Washington Post noted correctly that the most the US could boast about the conference was that "it didn't end in a failure." However, this shaky "success" looks very much like a failure on the pressing proliferation challenges to the treaty. And as much as the US believed it must address the demands of the non-nuclear-weapons states that the nuclear states do more to adhere to their own commitment to disarm, the most pressing challenge to the treaty is obviously not the pace of disarmament on the part of the five nuclear states, rather the dangerous proliferators: Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Some officials complained that the US nuclear arms control steps of recent months were in any case not recognized by the non-nuclear states as sufficient or even very significant – they pocketed them, and then additional demands were made. In this international atmosphere, one cannot avoid asking whether a "lack of failure" is indeed enough of a success to justify the poor end result of the 2010 NPT RevCon.