That’s how it goes for Obama: on one day you pass a resolution against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and on the very next day you have to expose a nation for trying to proliferate those weapons. That’s how it was during Obama’s intense days at the UN and the G20 summits on September 24 and 25. On the day after securing a unanimous vote for a UN Security Council nuclear nonproliferation resolution at the General Assembly meeting in New York, Obama traveled to Pittsburgh and outed Iran for hiding a uranium enrichment plant from international inspectors.

Iran has been lying about their nuclear development program for years, but now the lies have been exposed on an international stage – and in the context of the new resolution against proliferation. The back-to-back days of nuclear-themed dealings exhibited a level of coherence: first, Obama gets world leaders to agree on the unacceptable danger of nuclear weapons; then, he goes public with information about one of the world’s most profound nuclear dangers.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is certainly among the most dangerous people in the world and he ought not to be allowed access to nuclear weapons. His explicit anti-Semitism, paired with his unquestionably illegitimate “election,” make him one of the world’s most dangerous leaders, and certainly unfit to be in control of nuclear weapons.

But, in spite of his lying, cheating, hatemongering, and Holocaust denying, Ahmadinejad has made one valid criticism of the West’s stance toward Iran: the criticism of “nuclear elitism.” Nuclear elitism is the attitude that it is alright for one nation (the United States, say) to possess dozens or even hundreds of nuclear weapons while simultaneously crying foul when another nation dares to develop even one such weapon. The U.S. has manifested this type of elitism for years, jealously hording thousands more nuclear bombs than almost any other nation in the world.

By causing the UN Security Council to adopt a new agreement to curb nuclear proliferation, Obama helped secure a moral high ground for the U.S., which was then used as leverage to demand stricter sanctions against Iran for its nuclear aspirations. The Security Council’s resolution to update and reinforce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty can be seen as a step toward correcting nuclear elitism, and it also provided a measure of moral authority that is now being wielded as sanctioning power. The most morally significant feature of the resolution is Obama’s thoroughly anti-Bush stance that the United States is responsible for disarming its own nuclear weapons.

If Obama succeeds in diminishing – with the intent of eliminating – the U.S. nuclear arsenal, he will have made a huge contribution to global security. But there is still a long, long way to go toward this goal: the U.S. has more than 9,000 nuclear weapons. Such a daunting concentration of earth-rattling weaponry in the hands of a single nation has motivated the global demand for these weapons and has stoked the resentment of perverse leaders and governments, like those of Iran and North Korea. If the U.S. wants to contribute to lasting international security, it must first work to reverse the trend toward proliferation by eliminating its own arsenal. This if-then clause mirrors Obama’s political moves on the international stage at the UN and the G20 meetings: if he wants to change Iran’s nuclear policies, he must change the U.S.’s policies first.