What do the NPT and the League of Nations have in common?

Before World War II, the League of Nations wagged its finger at the transgressions of Italy, Japan, and Germany. In response, those three countries simply walked out of the organization and challenged the League to do something about it. We know the rest of the story.

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censured Iran for its “breach of its obligations” to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and for its refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions directed at Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran responded by announcing a plan to greatly expand its uranium enrichment capacity, with plans to add 10 additional enrichments sites. Even though Russia and China joined Europe, the United States, and a majority of other countries in the IAEA vote against Iran, the Iranian government did not hesitate to escalate its breach with the IAEA and the Security Council.

The Iran government is likely only a few small steps away from quitting the NPT and ejecting IAEA monitoring from its country. Should, as seems likely, Iran leave the NPT and disappear from IAEA monitoring, it will then be the Security Council’s responsibility to formulate a response. But the international legal system designed to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation — a system comprising the NPT, the IAEA, and the Security Council — has yet to demonstrate that it can stop countries that are determined to build a nuclear weapons capability.

The Security Council will likely impose much stiffer economic and financial sanctions against Iran. Based on its decisions to escalate the dispute, the Iranian government doesn’t seem concerned by this prospect. It must be concluding that side deals, smuggling, and oil market leverage will suffice to allow the regime to meet its goals.

The likely failure of sanctions to change Iran’s behavior would then bring the contentious issue of preventive war back into focus. No doubt the Security Council is many months, probably years away from taking up this debate. It remains to be seen whether it will fare any better than did the League of Nations in the 1930s. In the meantime, the international community will have to contemplate how it will cope with a nuclear nonproliferation system which is useless against determined regimes.