In March 1970, more than 70 percent of the first signatories of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons took the next step to ratify it, setting a course for phasing out nuclear weapons, allowing the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and ending nuclear arms testing and development.
But decades later, all is not well with the NPT, the world’s major global nuclear nonproliferation regime, as the current review conference underway at the United Nations is making clear. With the 11th NPT review gathering ending on May 22, experts are saying there are more issues dividing the 191 parties to the pact than those uniting them.
Throughout the weeks since the conference started, on April 27, the chair, Do Hung Viet, of Vietnam, has been projecting an image of optimism. He noted on May 12, for example, that there were still 10 days left for countries to agree on a declaration to reinforce the obligations of states parties to the NPT and assess progress on carrying out its provisions since its ratification.
Of the 10 review conferences held since the NPT entered into force in 1970, six ended without a binding consensus document, including the two most recent meetings, held in 2015 and 2022. That failure is hanging over this RevCon, as it’s called, according to top UN officials and others taking part in the conference.
Observers of the series of RevCons offer many reasons for lack of agreement over the years. One major recurring problem is the persistent noncompliance of nuclear weapons states (NWS) with their NPT obligations. There has been little to no trust among those countries to even think of debating a consensus agreement, leaving countries without warheads feeling increasingly more threatened by the growing discord of the NWS and what it may mean for humankind.
Some observers point to the primarily lower-level national participation of major powers at the RevCon, reflecting their passive investment in the conference. Yet, the timing for a productive conference couldn’t be more crucial.
“Today, a collective amnesia has taken hold,” António Guterres, the UN secretary-general said in his opening remarks on April 27, starting the four-week deliberations on the NPT. “Nuclear sabers rattle once more. Mistrust rules the day. Hard-won norms are eroding. Arms control is dying.”
Deep mistrust
The 2026 RevCon is an attempt by participants — and the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, which organizes the gathering — to redirect world leaders toward the goals of the treaty as agreed on decades ago and away from their hardening stances that leave the world rattled.
But mistrust, as Guterres said, has become an ever-harder barrier for the only nuclear weapons states that have signed the treaty — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — to let go of. Their mutual suspicions of one another have only heightened after the Feb. 28 attack on Iran by the US and Israel, the latter of which is not at all transparent about its own nuclear status.
Indeed, the five nuclear weapon states, which are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, have at different times defended their need to continue to arm themselves while paying lip service to the NPT. Britain and France, for example, may have held side events during the current RevCon to show their commitment to disarmament and nonproliferation, but experts said the events were performative.
Moreover, for the first time in decades, the five declared nuclear weapons states are actively modernizing their nuclear arsenals. “All five nuclear armed states are headed in the wrong direction. There are no active negotiations on disarmament,” Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the nongovernmental group Arms Control Association, told PassBlue.
Finger pointing and stigmatizing
At the RevCon so far, the US has not only called out Iran for its uranium enrichment but also lashed out at China for increasing its nuclear weapons arsenal and accusing Russia for refusing to renew the New Start agreement. On the other hand, Russia has berated Washington and Tel Aviv for attacking nuclear facilities placed under IAEA “safeguards,” ignoring that a precedent was set when Moscow attacked Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl power plants in its war in Ukraine.
Britain called out Russian hypocrisy in its speech. France criticized China for chasing the US warhead count without transparency. On its part, China has doubled the number of its nuclear warheads to 600 in five years. The number is expected to reach 1,000 in another four years.
Kimball said the nuclear armed states are positioning themselves to say they are meeting their core treaty commitments, while pointing fingers at others for their shortcomings carrying out the disarmament portion of the treaty.
Back on March 2, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would increase the number of his country’s warheads from under 300 to an unspecified amount. As the only European Union member with a declared nuclear weapon, Macron said he was raising the count as a deterrent, a position that his country and Britain reiterated in their speeches at the RevCon on April 27.
Macron also proposed to conduct nuclear exercises with fellow EU member states, a policy that is raised in the RevCon’s baseline draft declaration, saying that the conference “expresses concerns about the potential establishment of any new nuclear sharing arrangement.”
This is the first time that countries are joining forces, however, to call out the so-called deterrence policy, according to Seth Shelden, the UN liaison for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
“What nuclear deterrence policies do deter, quite clearly, is nuclear disarmament. In this sense, it is not possible to pursue nuclear deterrence and nuclear disarmament at the same time. We must stigmatize these policies as unsustainable and monstrous, and bring an end to them,” Shelden told PassBlue in an interview on May 10.
US-Israeli war against Iran
It took 32 minutes on the opening day for the conference to fray. What was supposed to be a routine vote to elect 34 vice presidents devolved into a clash between Washington and Tehran. Iran’s VP nomination, put forward by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), spurred immediate objections from the US, Britain, the United Arab Emirates and Australia. Only Russia’s Andrey Belousov defended it, arguing that opposition should have been raised at the committee level.
Belousov said that he hoped that the “politicization” of the conference would not characterize the rest of the review, yet that is exactly what has unfolded in some of the nearly daily meetings held during the RevCon since April 27.
Olamide Samuel, a specialist in nuclear risk reduction at the Open Nuclear Network think tank, told PassBlue that Iran has been vocal on the rights of non-nuclear weapon states under NPT’s Article 4, which guarantees the rights of such to peacefully use nuclear technology, giving Iran credibility to become a vice president for the RevCon.
“NAM has also been tacitly trying to counter what it sees as the unfair isolation of Iran by other Middle Eastern and Western states, and so retaining Iran’s standing in the grouping was also tactical and part of NAM’s overarching posture,” Samuel said in a brief chat on May 6.
The Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018 (JCPOA), the agreemtent to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons quickly while enabling the International Atomic Energy Agency to closely monitor such activities. But Iran’s refusal to surrender its nuclear program, which it argues falls squarely within the NPT’s peaceful-use pillar, has become the central obstacle to Washington reaching a durable peace agreement with Iran amid the current ceasefire between the US and Iran. (The Trump administration tore up the Iran deal in 2018.)
“The United States has long been concerned by Tehran’s sustained path of nuclear escalation,” John Zadrozny, a US senior adviser for nuclear nonproliferation, said on May 5 at the RevCon. “Iran steadily advanced an enrichment program it began in secret decades ago, in flagrant violation of its safeguards obligations, ultimately becoming the only country without nuclear weapons to enrich uranium to 60 percent — near weapons grade.”
Samuel of the Open Nuclear Network said that Iran and other non-nuclear weapons states want guarantees that their nuclear infrastructure won’t be treated as military targets while fulfilling their obligations under the NPT.
Do Hung Viet, the RevCon chair, presented delegations with a zero draft declaration last week, affirming the “inviolability of peaceful nuclear activities” and calling on states parties to refrain from attacks on nuclear facilities, a provision already being violated by the US in Iran and Russia in Ukraine.
A WMD-free zone in the Mideast
Although the 1995 RevCon did not produce a consensus document, two important resolutions were made from the gathering: the reviews would continue indefinitely and the Mideast would establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical and biological, a pledge promised by the US, Russia and Britain to Arab states and reciprocally endorsed by those countries, led by Egypt. It is a pledge that has been put forward since 2000.
For the WMD-free zone to be created, however, Israel, which reportedly possesses at least 80 warheads, must join the NPT. Israel has claimed nuclear ambiguity, refusing to hold conversations around such weapons.
After the escalating US and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, Arab states may withhold consensus on a WMD-free zone for a third consecutive time if Washington continues to back Israel’s refusal to place its nuclear activities under IAEA oversight.
“Israel needs to come out and confess that it possesses nuclear weapons as that is the first step towards creating a nuclear weapon free zone,” said Karim Kamel, a research fellow at the Peace Research Center Prague at Charles University. (He told PassBlue that his view does not represent his organization.)
Human control over nuke facilities
One area where this year’s RevCon may reach consensus is a proposal requiring human involvement in nuclear command-and-control chains. Alice Saltini, a nonresident expert on AI at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said that agreement is possible precisely because the language under discussion is deliberately broad.
All five nuclear weapon states are researching how to integrate autonomous weapon systems into their defense infrastructure. While France and Britain conduct these studies with the idea of keeping humans in the loop, Russia and China have explored fully autonomous battle weapons. The US has signed deals with leading AI companies to embed their models into classified military networks.
“So, the challenge is finding that balance: making the language meaningful enough to reflect the risks we’re starting to see, while still keeping it politically workable for all states involved,” Saltini said.
The RevCon’s long, winding road to a final outcome, to use diplomatic jargon, may hit a dead end, but the conversation on the status of the NPT is essential, as Do Hung Viet acknowledged, saying at the start: “The diplomatic path is demanding, often frustrating, and rarely produces the dramatic breakthroughs that capture headlines, but it remains the only path that does not court catastrophe.”
Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
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