Every nuclear arms negotiation is about a weapon that nobody in their right mind would ever use. So negotiations like those with Iran come with a Kafkaesque twist: The most forceful moral authority for stopping the creation of another nuclear power is vested in the only nation actually to have used nuclear weapons, the United States. To be sure, the U.S. was not the only party to the talks with Iran, but it was the primary power. Poignantly, the Iran deal was made during the run-up to the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945.
Seventy years is a long time for the policy that became known as nuclear non-proliferation to have remained effective, but it has. Surely, there have been scary moments, but the bomb has proved against all odds to be a durable deterrent—contemplation of its effects is enough to prevent its further use, something unique in the history of warfare.
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