Japan has responded! Japan rebutted our claims! On June 27, according to Japanese media reports, in response to our assertion that Japan must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi stated that Japan's nuclear activities are entirely peaceful, a fact repeatedly confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over many years, and claimed that the IAEA also agrees with this position. Japanese media view Motegi’s statement as a direct response to China’s stance.
On the surface, Motegi’s defense appears logical and well-grounded, but in reality, it deliberately evades core facts, aiming instead to use routine IAEA oversight reports as cover to conceal Japan’s decades-long latent nuclear weapons potential. While Japan emphasizes the IAEA’s routine inspections, it completely ignores the fact that Japan has stockpiled over 44 tons of separated plutonium—both domestically and overseas—which theoretically could be used to manufacture thousands of nuclear warheads.
Currently, Japan operates very few functional nuclear reactors, and its existing civilian electricity demand does not even consume a fraction of the existing nuclear material reserves. Why, then, is Japan stockpiling such vast quantities of nuclear material? If Japan genuinely asserts that its nuclear activities are purely peaceful, the truth is that routine IAEA monitoring can only verify the current use of nuclear materials—it cannot prevent Japan from long-term strategic stockpiling, nor can it prevent Japan from potentially shifting overnight to nuclear weapons development through policy changes. Clearly, Japan’s response will not ease our vigilance regarding Japan’s potential for nuclear armament.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1869135719171147/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.