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... nuclear weapons is not our arsenal, but, rather, Israel's.
At present, Israel maintains an absolute nuclear hegemony in the Middle East, even if they will not acknowledge that fact. Iran does not pose any threat, at present, to the United States--it simply doesn't have the capacity to do so. I suppose, eventually, if Iran were to develop weapons, they might be able to produce a small enough weapon that it could be transported to mainland US as ship cargo, but as for conventional delivery systems, they simply aren't a threat, either now or in the near future. That case does not apply with regard to Israel, however.
Therefore, the US is unilaterally protecting Israel's hegemony. The IAEA isn't issuing any proclamations of alarm, and their knowledge of Iran's progress toward weapons (as with Iraq's disarmament program), so far, is probably superior to that of the US.
I agree that the US stand on nuclear weapons is often hypocritical, but expecting the US, at this point in time, to completely disarm is neither practical nor politically viable. As well, the US has fairly consistently looked the other way when presumed allies began development programs (South Africa and India come immediately to mind).
In part because of the Cold War, we've come to think of nuclear weapons as global threats (because of the geographical orientation of the former Soviet Union and the United States), but their post-`50s proliferation is mostly due to regional conflict--India/Pakistan, N. Korea/S. Korea, Israel/Arab Middle Eastern states, northern Africa Islamic states/South Africa.
Without permanently mitigating those regional conflicts, one has to accept that any lopsidedness in regional parity will be seen as a defensive weakness on the part of the countries without significant deterrent, and non-proliferation efforts will be much more difficult.
In the case of, say, N. Korea, the recent bellicosity of the US isn't helping non-proliferation efforts--because of those very same nuclear weapons you describe as part of US hypocrisy, North Korea feels fully justified in carrying out a development program and in describing it as completely defensive--the large, affluent, nuclear-armed US is threatening small, defenseless North Korea. Iran may one day be saying much the same thing about Israel. At this juncture, Israel presents a much greater threat to Iran than Iran does to Israel.
The central hypocrisy in this (with regard to Iran), I believe, is not that the US itself has weapons; rather, it is that the US has used the non-proliferation process to protect itself and its allies and to threaten its foes.
When Bush unilaterally ignored the ABM treaty by proceeding with the installation of an ABM system, that in itself was a destabilizing action which most countries viewed with some alarm. It encouraged the Russians to develop new weapon counter-strategies and thus perpetuated the arms race. But, that action had little to do with other small nations' development--it was directed squarely at the Soviet Union, which has a rough parity in weapons with the US (and to a lesser degree, China, which may reach rough parity eventually). Nevertheless, it was a manipulation of the treaty process to further its own superiority, in much the same way as the US has used the non-proliferation treaty to its advantage. That's where I see the real hypocrisy.
Cheers.
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