It appears the next phase in the standoff over Iran’s apocalypse-inducing nuclear weapons program is beginning to come into focus.

In the months ahead, don’t be surprised if the efforts of the Obama administration to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions become predicated on the nuclear disarmament of the Jewish state. Why is this likely? Simple: Such a mandate is the inevitable outgrowth of the foolish yet increasingly pervasive tendency to consider as equals the nuclear ambitions of Israel and Iran.

This false moral equivalence between the nuclear programs of Iran and the Jewish state is currently on display in New York, at the month-long Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (npt). The conference is supposed to focus on revising and updating the npt, of which Israel has never been a signatory. But when the conference opened Monday, it quickly became evident that UN member states had set their sights on a “predictable target.”

That would be Israel.

In one of the first addresses Monday morning, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa spoke on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement, which is the largest single coalition within the United Nations (118 of the 192 UN countries are members). According to Asia Times, Natalegawa noted specifically that it was Israel’s refusal to sign the npt that had “resulted in the continued exposure of non-nuclear-weapon states of the [Middle East] to nuclear threats by the only country possessing these weapons of mass destruction.”

Forget Iran’s fearless scramble for nukes—most UN member states apparently believe the greatest nuclear threat in the Middle East comes from Israel’s refusal to sign the npt.

After Natalegawa’s address, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the only head of state who personally attended the conference, took the podium. Following his requisite praises of Allah and ominous invocation for the speedy arrival of the Mahdi, Ahmadinejad waxed eloquent for 35 minutes—in front of the representatives of 168 countries who didn’t leave the room—on how the npt can be improved, and how the United States and the “Zionist regime” are the central cause of nuclear proliferation.

“Regrettably, the government of the United States has not only used nuclear weapons, but also continues to threaten to use such weapons against other countries, including Iran,” Ahmadinejad “righteously” lamented. That’s not all, according to Iran’s president. The “Zionist regime” has “stockpiled hundreds of nuclear warheads,” and with support and sustenance from America, has “waged many wars in the region and continues to threaten the people and nations of the region with terror and invasion.”

Seriously, can you think of the last time Israel engaged in a conflict that was not strictly defensive?

This moral equivalence at the UN comes amid recent reports that Egypt too is preparing to step up pressure on Israel about its nuclear arsenal. On Tuesday, the Christian Science Monitor reported that “Egypt is … declaring that the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East cannot be tied solely to Iran’s nuclear ambitions but must also address the region’s only existing nuclear power: Israel” (emphasis mine). Speaking in New York last week, Egypt’s ambassador to the UN stated: “We refuse the existence of any nuclear weapons in the [Middle East], whether it is in Iran or whether it is in Israel.”

Think on that: These people behave as though there’s no difference between Israel having nukes and Iran having nukes!

Not surprisingly, Egypt’s renewed efforts to focus on Israel’s nuclear weapons have caught the attention of the Obama administration. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the “U.S. is negotiating with Egypt a proposal to make the Middle East [including Israel] a region free of nuclear weapons.” Although the Obama administration apparently assured Israel that it’s not about to impose a nuclear-free zone on the Middle East, there’s little doubt it is prepared to tackle the issue of Israel’s nukes more directly than previous administrations.

“We’ve made a proposal to them [Egypt] that goes beyond what the U.S. has been willing to do before,” a senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal.

Clearly, this Cairo-Washington axis does not bode well for Israel. “As far as Israel is concerned this is very problematic,” stated Dr. Eytan Gilboa, a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. “The fact that the U.S. is pushing this along with Egypt could threaten our vital national security at a time when relations with the U.S. are tense and the threat from Iran is becoming more and more serious every day.”

The notion that Israel’s nuclear weapons destabilize the Middle East is simply absurd. Even more absurd though, is that such a notion is being openly and widely entertained at a UN conference on the npt, which America’s president has said is the “cornerstone of the world’s efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.” As Bret Stephens wrote in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, “Iran, in connivance with the usual Middle Eastern suspects (and their useful idiots in the West), is trying to use the npt as a cudgel to force Israel to disarm.”

It is unlikely that after the current conference in New York, America and the West will begin immediately to explicitly and forcefully demand that Israel sign the npt and start tossing away its nuclear weapons. Inevitably, however, this conference—as well as the joint agreement between America and Egypt regarding Israel’s nukes—will foster the false moral equivalence between Israel’s nuclear program and Iran’s nuclear program. The more the nuclear ambitions of Israel and Iran are discussed in the same conversation, the more ingrained and mainstream the moral equivalence will become.

Expect it to become widely accepted that curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions is contingent upon on addressing the issue of Israel’s nukes!

American leaders’ growing failure to discern between the foreign-policy objectives of nations like Israel and Iran is a sign of the moral decay besieging Washington. It is no secret that Israel developed nuclear weapons during the heat of the Cold War as a defensive measure. Or that Israel has possessed nukes for roughly four decades, and has never come close to exploding a single bomb—not even during the heat of its many wars. Or that Israel never officially discusses its nuclear cache and never parades them about.

It is no secret that Israel for decades has been a stable and responsible proprietor of nuclear weapons!

Yet to Mr. Obama, there appears to be little distinction between Israel’s nukes and the nuclear aspirations of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even though Iran exists today as the number-one state sponsor of terrorism. Even though Tehran bankrolls the activities of terrorist proxies in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and further afield. Even though Iranian mullahs and government leaders alike boast publicly about America’s annihilation and the Jewish state’s demise. And even though Iran’s president prays openly for the return of the Mahdi and is actively working to precipitate the planet-engulfing chaos and violence that he says will precede it.

This week, as Ahmadinejad was swooning before the UN, news broke that on his way to New York he had stopped by Zimbabwe, where he apparently struck a deal with Robert Mugabe that will allow Iran to swap oil for uranium. President Obama ignores the fact that Tehran is developing an advanced ballistic missile program and putting satellites into space, all in preparation for the moment—which many believe is now imminent—when it can bolt a nuclear payload to a missile and fire it into Israel, or Europe, or even the United States.

When will this moral ambivalence finally end? Believe it or not, you can answer that question. How? By looking into the “more sure word” of Bible prophecy. God informs us through a multitude of prophecies in both the Old and New Testaments that America—as a direct result of its moral ambivalence which is caused by disobedience to God’s laws—will end up prostrate and helpless before its enemies. (To fully understand this prophecy, read The United States and Britain in Prophecy.)

Is this how your life will end? It doesn’t have to be. To learn more, request a free copy of our booklet Repentance Toward God.