Madam, - Your Editorial on "Iran and the nuclear threat" (July 12th) discusses the growing tension between the US, Israel and Iran over the latter's nuclear programme, which is "widely suspected of being geared to the development of nuclear weapons".
What is omitted is any mention of Israel's highly secret and illegal nuclear capacity, which is in blatant disregard of international treaties and poses a serious threat to regional peace.
Israel is not among the five "nuclear weapons states", an internationally recognised status conferred by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): those states are the US, Russia, the UK, France and China. Israel has not signed the NPT, designed to prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons, and, as a result, it is not subject to inspections and the threat of sanctions by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Your editorial mentions Iran's "prevarication" not once but twice; what about the prevarication of the US and Israel in insisting on Iranian compliance from Iran with the NPT while they blatantly violate it? Remember President Bush's 2006 deal to sell materials for nuclear energy to India, a non-signatory of the NPT, and their joint statement stating that India was "a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology"?
Does this mean that the NPT has to be complied with only by certain states of the US's choosing, such as Iran, while "cronies" such as Israel are exempt?
Clearly there is a Middle East policy of double standards, ignoring Israel's weapons programmes while insisting that others - notably pre-war Iraq, Iran and Syria - are a threat to peace because of their alleged weapons of mass destruction.
- Yours, etc,
DOROTHY MORRISSEY, Brussels, Belgium.