Post-Cold War WMD proliferation concentrated in Islamic and Confucian states

Evidence

In the post-Cold War world efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them have been concentrated in Islamic and Confucian states. Pakistan and probably North Korea have a small number of nuclear weapons or at least the ability to assemble them rapidly and are also developing or acquiring longer range missiles capable of delivering them. Iraq had a significant chemical warfare capability and was making major efforts to acquire biological and nuclear weapons. Iran has an extensive program to develop nuclear weapons and has been expanding its capability for delivering them. In 1988 President Rafsanjani declared that Iranians “must fully equip ourselves both in the offensive and defensive use of chemical, bacteriological, and radiological weapons,” and three years later his vice president told an Islamic conference, “Since Israel continues to possess nuclear weapons, we, the Muslims, must cooperate to produce an atom bomb, regardless of U.N. attempts to prevent proliferation.” In 1992 and 1993 top U.S. intelligence officials said Iran was pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and in 1995 Secretary of State Warren Christopher bluntly stated, “Today Iran is engaged in a crash effort to develop nuclear weapons.” Other Muslim states reportedly interested in developing nuclear weapons include Libya, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia. “The crescent,” in Ali Mazrui’s colorful phrase, is “over the mushroom cloud,” and can threaten others in addition to the West. Islam could end up “playing nuclear Russian roulette with two other civilizations—with Hinduism in South Asia and with Zionism and politicized Judaism in the Middle East.” — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 501

Categorization

• QUESTION: Huntington’s mid-1990s snapshot of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia pursuing WMD is worth checking against what actually happened — how many of these programs were real versus inflated by intelligence or policy interests?
• XREF: The claim that proliferators saw Israel’s nuclear arsenal as justification parallels the earlier passages on how civilizational self-image drives strategic rivalry rather than raw threat assessment.