It is already twenty years since the Department of Safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began to uncover Iran’s undeclared nuclear programme. On 10 November 2003, a damning report was sent to the IAEA Board of Governors, stating that Iran had mastered almost the entire front end of the nuclear fuel cycle (including the uranium enrichment process, which has both civilian and military applications), and that it had ‘developed a uranium centrifuge enrichment programme over the past 18 years and a laser enrichment programme over the past 12 years’ without informing the Agency. All this despite the fact that, in the 1980s, Iran, which was at war with Iraq, had no plans to build nuclear power stations, the one under construction in Bushehr during the Shah’s reign having been destroyed by the Iraqi air force.

Today it is probably too late to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state, i.e. a state capable of producing more than one atomic bomb in a few months. This makes it all the more important to adopt measures to dissuade Iran from going one step further and manufacturing such weapons. Over the last two decades, experience has taught us the many weaknesses and shortcomings of the current non-proliferation regime.

To improve the situation, the adoption by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) of the two generic resolutions mentioned below would make a real difference. These generic resolutions are purely preventive and non-discriminatory in nature.

For these resolutions to be adopted by the UNSC, its five permanent members will have to act in concert, recognising the urgency of adopting these measures to mitigate the consequences of the next nuclear proliferation crisis.

Achieving this will not be easy, but fortunately, at a time when tensions are so high between some of the permanent members of the Security Council, there is one thing on which they all agree: none of them wants another country to have the bomb.

Let’s hope that today’s leaders will be convinced of the merits of the proposals presented here and that they will strive to bring them to fruition.