Cole Gets his Nuclear Facts Wrong

Juan Cole has been busy with Pakistan recently, quite plausibly, and this has saved him from making embarrassing mistakes about Israel, as is his wont each time he mentions us. But this was only a temporary respite, and yesterday he posted this gem:

Israel is the country that broke the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in the Middle East and introduced nuclear weapons into the region, kicking off an arms race with Iraq that in many ways led to the Iraq War. US and American complaints about Iran's civilian energy research program never acknowledge Israel's own outlaw status with regard to nonproliferation.

Well, no. Israel didn't break the NPT, because along with India and Pakistan, Israel never signed it (North Korea signed, violated, and withdrew). Iraq violated the NPT, tho may have desisted after Israel destroyed its Tammuz reactor in 1981. Iran is probably violating the NPT.

Actually, since the NPT was open to be signed in July 1968, Israel may already have had either nuclear weapons or at least a nuclear program well before then, though I don't see how I (or Cole, or anyone else outside of a very small circle of relevant Israelis) can prove this.

Having falsely identified Israel as an "outlaw", Cole then goes on to tell that this is cause for the present war in Iraq. If you want to follow that kind of path, however, why not go further? The Jewish insistence on preserving an identity and culture has created endless tension and even violence these past 3,000-some years, and the world might have been a much calmer place without the Jews.