I do not believe that, when Senator Jon Kyl spoke yesterday in praise of a defense appropriations bill that breaks all previous records of military spending, he meant to communicate any sense of irony. Yet, the thread of irony was woven throughout his speech. Nowhere was this irony more clear than in Kyl’s comments on nuclear weapons:

“I am disappointed that this provision was watered down in conference, as it passed the Senate with its unanimous endorsement that the Iranian Central Bank should be sanctioned if Iran continues to defy the world on uranium enrichment. However, I am pleased that it continues to state the strong support of the Congress for the proposition that Iran must comply with the U.N. Security Council Resolutions directing it to halt uranium enrichment a provision I authored, Section 1251, with several of my colleagues, including the Republican leader and the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, regarding the START follow-on.

The Perry-Schlesinger Commission was clear that further reductions in the U.S. nuclear weapons force are only prudent if the weapons that remain are highly reliable and credible. This is only possible with a robust modernization program, which has to include full and timely Lifetime Extension Programs for the B61 and W76 warheads consistent with military needs; funding for a modern warhead that includes new approaches to life extension involving replacement, or, possibly, component reuse; full funding for stockpile surveillance work through the nuclear weapons complex, as well as the science and engineering campaigns at the national laboratories; and full funding for the timely replacement of the Los Alamos plutonium research and development and analytical chemistry facility, the uranium facilities at the Oak Ridge Y-12 plant, and a modern pit facility.”

When it comes to Iran, Senator Kyl opposes mere nuclear enrichment, because it might lead to Iran constructing nuclear weapons some time in the future. Kyl proposes sanctions for Iran.

When it comes to the United States, Senator Kyl makes no mention of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty that the United States signed into law over a generation ago, which requires the United States to make serious movements toward complete elimination of its huge nuclear weapons arsenal. Instead, Kyl defends the idea of keeping, and even modernizing, the American stockpile of nuclear weapons, stating that reduction of number of nuclear warheads can only be allowed to occur if the warheads that remain are made even more intimidating against foreign nations.

It’s a particularly sinister idea that Senator Kyl describes making America’s nuclear weapons more reliably deadly as a part of the military’s “new approaches to life extension”.

There is no rational basis for the belief that one standard on nuclear weapons ought to apply to Iran, while another standard completely applies to the United States. It cannot be factually stated that Iran is more likely to use nuclear weapons than the United States, given the plain fact that the USA is the only nation on earth ever to have used nuclear weapons against an enemy nation’s civilian population.