Buy the article on CAIRN websiteAbstract

The current crisis, born from the nuclear activities undertaken by Iran, resulted in clarifying the difficulty in reconciling the right to the peaceful use of the nuclear energy with nonproliferation. Whereas Teheran asserts its – legitimate – right to a peaceful use, the international community expresses doubts as for the real purpose of its program, and the IAEA is unable to guarantee its exclusively non-violent character. If Iran respects the letter of the NPT, it does not respect however the spirit of it insofar as it undertook activities not declared before the IAEA and did not respect its own engagements when it stated to voluntarily apply the provisions of the additional protocol to the agency safeguards. One faces, therefore, a problem of interpretation of the provisions of the NPT.

Grégory Boutherin, officer of the French Air Force and lecturer at the Centre de recherche de l’Armée de l’air (CReA), is achieving a PHD in international public law on the nonproliferation of Weapons of mass destruction at the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales et communautaires (CERIC, Aix-Marseille III). Daniel Kiffer has been analyst on arms control and counter-proliferation issues for the Ministry of Defence from 1988 to 2003.