CANBERRA – One of the many things the world has learned from the Iran nuclear saga is that its leaders made a mistake, when negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1960s, in not doing anything to constrain uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. This failure apparently stemmed from the belief – long since proven wrong, certainly in the case of uranium – that the only states ever likely to possess that technical capability already possessed nuclear weapons, or (like Germany) were totally committed never to acquire them.
堪培拉—世界从伊朗核传奇中学到的众多教训之一是其领导人在20世纪60年代谈判核不扩散条约式犯了一个错误，没有做任何事情约束铀浓缩和钚再处理。这一错误显然源自一个早就在铀问题上被证明错误的信念——仅有的那些有可能拥有这一技术能力的国家要么已经拥有了核武器，要么（如德国）承诺永远不会拥有该能力。