This week, Iran and the United States clashed at the United Nations review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Fletcher and Octavio dig into why this 1968 agreement remains the only real barrier between the world we have and a world where dozens of countries have the bomb.
Esta semana, Irán y Estados Unidos protagonizaron un enfrentamiento diplomático en la conferencia de revisión del Tratado de No Proliferación Nuclear en la ONU. Fletcher y Octavio exploran por qué este tratado de 1968 sigue siendo la única barrera entre la humanidad y un mundo con decenas de potencias nucleares.
7 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| enriquecimiento | enrichment (nuclear) | El enriquecimiento de uranio al sesenta por ciento no tiene ninguna justificación para uso civil. |
| proliferación | proliferation | El tratado existe precisamente para evitar la proliferación de armas nucleares en el mundo. |
| limitar | to restrict, to limit | El gobierno decidió limitar el acceso de los inspectores internacionales a sus instalaciones. |
| isótopo | isotope | Las centrifugadoras separan los isótopos del uranio para aumentar su concentración. |
| verificación | verification | Sin un mecanismo de verificación eficaz, el tratado pierde toda su credibilidad. |
| desarme | disarmament | Las potencias nucleares prometieron avanzar hacia el desarme, pero nunca lo cumplieron del todo. |
| centrifugadora | centrifuge | Irán ha desarrollado centrifugadoras cada vez más avanzadas para procesar el uranio. |
Nuclear treaties aren't exactly page-turners, or so I used to think, until I started pulling the thread on what happened in New York last week at the United Nations.
Claro, porque lo que pasó no fue solo una pelea diplomática más.
Right, because what happened wasn't just another diplomatic spat.
Fue algo que revela una tensión muy profunda en el corazón del orden internacional.
It revealed a very deep tension at the heart of the international order.
Let's set the scene.
The NPT, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, holds a review conference every five years.
Countries gather, they argue about compliance, they argue about disarmament.
And this time, Iran showed up and got elected as a vice president of the meeting.
Y Estados Unidos lo rechazó.
And the United States rejected it.
Dijo que es inaceptable que un país que viola el tratado tenga un papel de liderazgo en la conferencia que supervisa ese mismo tratado.
It said it's unacceptable for a country that violates the treaty to hold a leadership role in the very conference that oversees that treaty.
Which, on the surface, feels like a procedural fight.
But the more I read about it, the more it feels like a window into something much older and much more complicated.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Para entender esto, hay que volver a 1968, cuando se firmó el tratado.
To understand this, you have to go back to 1968, when the treaty was signed.
El mundo tenía cinco potencias nucleares: Estados Unidos, la Unión Soviética, el Reino Unido, Francia y China.
The world had five nuclear powers: the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China.
Y el miedo era que si no se hacía algo, en veinte años habría veinte países con la bomba.
And the fear was that if nothing was done, within twenty years there would be twenty countries with the bomb.
And that prediction was not unreasonable.
In the early sixties, Kennedy estimated there could be fifteen to twenty-five nuclear states by 1970.
That number never came close to materializing, largely because of this treaty.
El tratado tiene una lógica interesante.
The treaty has an interesting logic.
Los países que ya tenían armas nucleares prometieron avanzar hacia el desarme.
The countries that already had nuclear weapons promised to move toward disarmament.
Y los países que no las tenían prometieron no desarrollarlas, a cambio del derecho a usar la energía nuclear con fines pacíficos.
And the countries that didn't have them promised not to develop them, in exchange for the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
That's the bargain.
And it was always a fragile one, because the disarmament half of it has basically never happened.
The nuclear powers still have thousands of warheads between them.
Sí, y eso es lo que países como Irán usan como argumento.
Yes, and that's what countries like Iran use as an argument.
Dicen: 'Nosotros cumplimos nuestra parte, pero las potencias nucleares no cumplen la suya.' Es un argumento que tiene cierta lógica, aunque sea usado de mala fe.
They say: 'We upheld our side, but the nuclear powers haven't upheld theirs.' It's an argument with a certain logic to it, even if it's used in bad faith.
That tension, between the moral argument and the actual behavior, is exactly what makes Iran such a difficult case.
Because Iran signed the NPT.
It's a member.
But it has also been enriching uranium to levels that have no plausible civilian explanation.
Para entender la tecnología, hay que hablar del enriquecimiento.
To understand the technology, you have to talk about enrichment.
El uranio natural contiene solo un pequeño porcentaje del isótopo que se necesita para producir energía o armas.
Natural uranium contains only a small percentage of the isotope needed to produce energy or weapons.
Para un reactor civil, necesitas enriquecerlo hasta aproximadamente el tres o cuatro por ciento.
For a civilian reactor, you need to enrich it to about three or four percent.
Para una bomba, necesitas más del noventa por ciento.
For a bomb, you need more than ninety percent.
And Iran, at various points in the last few years, has been enriching to sixty percent.
Which is not weapons-grade, technically, but it's also not a number that has any innocent explanation.
There's no reactor on earth that needs sixty-percent-enriched uranium.
La tecnología clave son las centrifugadoras.
The key technology is centrifuges.
Son máquinas que giran a velocidades increíbles para separar los isótopos del uranio.
These are machines that spin at incredible speeds to separate uranium isotopes.
Irán ha desarrollado generaciones de centrifugadoras cada vez más avanzadas, y eso es lo que más preocupa a Occidente.
Iran has developed increasingly advanced generations of centrifuges, and that is what worries the West most.
I covered the Stuxnet story back when it broke, and the thing that stayed with me was not the cyberweapon itself but how delicate those centrifuges are.
The whole attack worked by making them spin slightly too fast, so they destroyed themselves from the inside.
Stuxnet fue un momento histórico en la tecnología militar.
Stuxnet was a historic moment in military technology.
Estados Unidos e Israel crearon el primer arma digital capaz de destruir infraestructura física.
The United States and Israel created the first digital weapon capable of destroying physical infrastructure.
Retrasó el programa nuclear iraní varios años.
It set back the Iranian nuclear program by several years.
Y también abrió una nueva era de guerra cibernética.
And it also opened a new era of cyberwarfare.
Which is one of those cases where solving one problem creates a much bigger one.
You stop the centrifuges.
You also prove to every government on earth that critical infrastructure can be attacked through software.
Volviendo al tratado: el problema fundamental es que el TNP no tiene un mecanismo de expulsión.
Getting back to the treaty: the fundamental problem is that the NPT has no expulsion mechanism.
Si un país viola sus obligaciones, no hay forma fácil de sacarlo.
If a country violates its obligations, there's no easy way to remove it.
Corea del Norte anunció su retirada en 2003 y simplemente...
North Korea announced its withdrawal in 2003 and simply...
se fue.
left.
And now North Korea has the bomb.
That's the cautionary tale hanging over every single NPT meeting.
If you let violations slide, eventually you end up with more nuclear states.
Y sin embargo, también hay ejemplos positivos que la gente olvida.
And yet, there are also positive examples that people forget.
Sudáfrica desarrolló armas nucleares durante el apartheid y luego las desmanteló voluntariamente.
South Africa developed nuclear weapons during apartheid and then voluntarily dismantled them.
Fue el único país en la historia que ha renunciado a un arsenal nuclear que ya tenía.
It was the only country in history to give up a nuclear arsenal it already had.
That's a fact I genuinely did not know.
South Africa built six devices, then took them apart.
When the ANC came to power in 1994, the program was already gone.
Mandela inherited a country that had chosen not to be a nuclear power.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y eso demuestra que el tratado sí puede funcionar, que los países pueden hacer elecciones distintas.
And that shows that the treaty can work, that countries can make different choices.
Pero requiere un liderazgo político muy particular y un contexto internacional favorable.
But it requires very particular political leadership and a favorable international context.
Irán no tiene ninguno de los dos en este momento.
Iran has neither of those right now.
The context piece is key.
Iran is in the middle of a war, under a blockade, with its economy under enormous pressure.
Historically, that's precisely when countries have moved toward the bomb, not away from it.
Sí.
Yes.
El razonamiento estratégico es claro: si Corea del Norte no hubiera tenido la bomba, probablemente habría corrido la misma suerte que Irak o Libia.
The strategic reasoning is clear: if North Korea hadn't had the bomb, it would probably have suffered the same fate as Iraq or Libya.
Es una lección que los líderes iraníes conocen muy bien.
That's a lesson Iranian leaders know very well.
That's a genuinely uncomfortable argument to sit with.
Gaddafi gave up his weapons program in 2003, partly in response to international pressure.
Eight years later he was dead.
That sequence of events is not lost on anyone.
Por eso el conflicto en la conferencia de la ONU es más que protocolo.
That's why the clash at the UN conference is about more than protocol.
Cuando Estados Unidos dice que Irán no puede ser vicepresidente porque viola el tratado, Irán responde que es Estados Unidos quien viola el tratado al no desarmarse.
When the United States says Iran can't be vice president because it violates the treaty, Iran responds that it's the United States violating the treaty by not disarming.
Los dos tienen argumentos.
Both have arguments.
Los dos están también siendo hipócritas.
Both are also being hypocrites.
Thirty-some years of being a correspondent taught me that when two parties are both accusing each other of hypocrisy, they're usually both right.
The question is what you do with that.
Lo que me parece importante destacar es la tecnología del control, no solo la tecnología del arma.
What I think is important to highlight is the technology of control, not just the technology of the weapon.
El Organismo Internacional de Energía Atómica, la OIEA, tiene inspectores que visitan instalaciones nucleares en todo el mundo.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, has inspectors who visit nuclear facilities around the world.
Es una forma de verificación técnica que no existía antes del tratado.
It's a form of technical verification that didn't exist before the treaty.
The IAEA inspectors are a remarkable institution when you think about it.
Neutral technical experts with the authority to walk into sovereign facilities and count centrifuges.
Iran kicked them out at various points when things got uncomfortable.
Ese es siempre el momento de mayor peligro.
That is always the moment of greatest danger.
Cuando un país limita el acceso de los inspectores, la comunidad internacional pierde visibilidad sobre lo que está pasando.
When a country limits inspector access, the international community loses visibility into what's happening.
Y sin información técnica precisa, las decisiones políticas se toman en la oscuridad.
And without precise technical information, political decisions get made in the dark.
I keep thinking about the intelligence failures around Iraq's weapons program in 2003.
The assumption that the weapons existed, when they didn't.
That's what happens when verification breaks down: you're making life-and-death decisions on guesswork.
Y la tecnología no resuelve ese problema completamente.
And technology doesn't solve that problem completely.
Hay formas de ocultar instalaciones nucleares, de construirlas bajo tierra, de disfrazar su propósito.
There are ways to hide nuclear facilities, to build them underground, to disguise their purpose.
El programa nuclear de Corea del Norte sorprendió a los servicios de inteligencia más sofisticados del mundo durante años.
North Korea's nuclear program surprised the world's most sophisticated intelligence services for years.
So where does this leave us?
Iran at war, enriching uranium to levels that worry everyone, blocking or limiting inspections, and now turning up at the NPT conference to claim a leadership seat at the very table designed to police behavior like theirs.
Creo que lo que está en juego es más grande que Irán.
I think what's at stake is bigger than Iran.
Si el tratado pierde credibilidad, si los países ven que se puede violar sin consecuencias reales, otros empezarán a calcular si también ellos quieren tener la opción nuclear.
If the treaty loses credibility, if countries see that violations carry no real consequences, others will start calculating whether they too want the nuclear option.
Arabia Saudí ya ha dicho que si Irán tiene la bomba, ellos también la quieren.
Saudi Arabia has already said that if Iran gets the bomb, they want one too.
Which would be a proliferation cascade through one of the most volatile regions on earth.
Kennedy's nightmare from sixty years ago, basically.
Y por eso, a pesar de todos sus defectos, el TNP sigue siendo importante.
And that's why, despite all its flaws, the NPT still matters.
No es perfecto, pero es la única estructura que existe.
It's not perfect, but it's the only structure that exists.
Destruirla sería mucho más fácil que construir algo mejor.
Destroying it would be much easier than building something better.
Churchill had that phrase about democracy being the worst system except for all the others.
I think the NPT might be the international security equivalent of that.
Oye, Fletcher, tengo una pregunta.
Hey, Fletcher, I have a question.
Antes dijiste que Irán 'bloqueó' a los inspectores.
Earlier you said Iran 'blocked' the inspectors.
Usé la palabra 'limitar' en español, que creo que es más precisa.
I used the word 'limitar' in Spanish, which I think is more precise.
¿Sabes cuándo usar 'limitar' y cuándo 'bloquear' en español?
Do you know when to use 'limitar' versus 'bloquear' in Spanish?
My instinct would be to use 'bloquear' for everything because it feels stronger.
But there's a distinction, isn't there?
Exacto.
Exactly.
'Bloquear' implica una interrupción total, algo completamente cerrado.
'Bloquear' implies a total interruption, something completely closed off.
'Limitar' implica que algo sigue funcionando pero con restricciones.
'Limitar' implies something still functions but with restrictions.
Es la diferencia entre 'cerraron la puerta' y 'pusieron un guardia en la puerta.' En inglés diríais 'block' y 'restrict', creo.
It's the difference between 'they closed the door' and 'they put a guard at the door.' In English you'd say 'block' and 'restrict,' I think.
That's actually a useful distinction in the nuclear context specifically, because the IAEA situation with Iran was always partial, always disputed, always 'yes but.' Never a complete door-slam.
So 'limitar' is genuinely the more accurate word.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y eso importa en el periodismo y en la política.
And that matters in journalism and in politics.
Las palabras que eliges para describir una acción ya son una posición.
The words you choose to describe an action are already a position.
Si dices que Irán 'bloqueó' los inspectores, eso suena más agresivo que si dices que 'limitó el acceso.' Misma realidad, percepción muy diferente.
If you say Iran 'blocked' the inspectors, that sounds more aggressive than saying it 'limited access.' Same reality, very different perception.
Thirty years of writing for a living and I'm still learning this lesson.
A language lesson wrapped inside a geopolitics lesson.
Octavio, as always, thank you for correcting me in a way that somehow doesn't feel like being corrected.
Practico mucho.
I practice a lot.
Hasta la próxima semana, y recuerda: 'limitar' no es 'bloquear.' En español, en política y, aparentemente, también en los tratados nucleares.
Until next week, and remember: 'limitar' is not 'bloquear.' In Spanish, in politics, and apparently also in nuclear treaties.