The litmus test of a command and control system is in time of international crisis on the one hand, and in circumstances of disintegration of other authorities of the state on the other. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, the leadership provided assurances to the United States that the nuclear arsenal remained under control. No nuclear coups d'état have taken place, not to mention use of nuclear weapons in internal conflicts. We cannot be sure that this will be the case in the Middle East, where civil war could result in nuclear weapons falling into the hands of different factions. Coups d'état in the Middle East have rarely resulted in the leaders of the former regime being put out to pasture peacefully. The struggle is one for life and death and it is conceivable that one side may use nuclear weapons as a last-ditch option against its rival. 

Key features of nuclear command and control structures as they evolved during the Cold War in the US and the Soviet Union included: 

(1) Highly centralised systems with criteria for delegation of authority, which reflects the state's level of reliance on the operational units to which authority should be delegated. It should be noted that Western nations tended to adopt more delegative models, whereas the Soviet Union and China tended to centralism. American aircraft and ships regularly carried nuclear weapons, whereas Soviet aircraft never carried them outside Soviet airspace.

(2) Subordination of the "military" to the "civilian" lines of command: both Western and Soviet structures stressed civilian command over nuclear weapons. However, the West — and particularly the US — tended to have more faith in the discipline and loyalty to the civilian authority of their military command. According to a senior negotiator in the Salt talks, his Soviet counterpart once took him aside and told him that nuclear weapons were much too important to leave in the hands of military men. India, too, felt at the beginning that nuclear weapons were much too serious to leave to the army. The Chinese army, on the other hand, plays a political role and during the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese military warned the political leaders to keep away from their nuclear installations.

(3) Clear separation between research and development organisations and operational command: the Manhattan Project was dismantled less than a year and a half after Hiroshima, its research and development functions transferred to the United States Atomic Energy Commission and the weapons moved into the hands of the military under Presidential authority.

(4) Reliance on technical safeguards against theft, sabotage or unauthorised use of weapons, as opposed to systems based on "human safeguards". US technical safeguards have always been much more sophisticated than those of the Soviet bloc and it stands to reason that the new nuclear powers in the Middle East will rely for the first stage on human-oriented safeguards. 

In all these characteristics, the Middle Eastern countries are fundamentally different to the two superpowers of the Cold War. It seems likely that most regimes in the Middle East will not be able to adopt "delegative" models of command and control. Commonly viewed as autocratic and centralist, these regimes are, in fact, "polycratic" and multipolar. Consequently, strategic decisions cannot be taken without due multilateral "consultation". On the institutional level, leaders in the region tend to encourage competition between military and security organisations as a means of enhancing their own control, thus according those organisations inordinate influence on strategic decision-making. The leaders will probably be wary not to strengthen any one apparatus by giving it a unique status in the decision process regarding use of nuclear weapons. On the social level, regimes in the region tend to be "tribal", representing one component of society and willing to sacrifice others. Saddam's regime was an excellent example of this, but the Saudi and other Gulf Arab states are also typical of this phenomenon.