Who Rules the World? Reframings

by Noam Chomsky

Take the case of Iran, which is considered in the West—not in the Arab world, not in Asia—the gravest threat to world peace. It’s a Western obsession, and it’s interesting to look into the reasons, but I’ll put that aside here. Is there a way to deal with the supposed gravest threat to world peace? Actually, there are quite a few. One way, a pretty sensible one, was proposed at a meeting of the nonaligned countries in Tehran in 2013. In fact, they were just reiterating a proposal that’s been around for decades, pressed particularly by Egypt, and has been approved by the UN General Assembly. The proposal is to move toward establishing a nuclear weapons–free zone in the region. That wouldn’t be the answer to everything, but it would be a pretty significant step forward. And there were ways to proceed: under UN auspices, there was to be an international conference in Finland in December 2012 to try to implement such a plan. What happened? You won’t read about it in the newspapers, because it was only reported in specialist journals. In early November, Iran agreed to attend the meeting. A couple of days later Obama cancelled the meeting, saying the time wasn’t right.4 The European Parliament issued a statement calling for it to continue, as did the Arab states. Nothing resulted.