Assessing Proliferation Risks in the Middle East

The United States has long been concerned with nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. It went to war in 2003 on the (false) premise that Iraq was close to building nuclear weapons. In 2004, the Brookings Institution warned of a nuclear tipping point' that might be reached due to some combination of changes in US policy, the breakdown of the global non-proliferation regime, the erosion of regional security, domestic imperatives and the increased availability of technology.(') In 2010, Richard L. Russell contributed an article to Joint Forces Quarterly called Off and Running: The Middle East Arms Race', in which he noted that a desire among regional governments to deter adversaries, compensate for conventional-weapons shortcomings, enhance war-fighting capabilities, garner domestic political power, and augment their international standing and leverage, especially in relation to the United States, could compel an arms race.(2)