Iran’s Foreign Minister Calls on International Community to Strip Israel of Nuclear Arms

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has called on the international community to pressure Israel to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and eliminate the country’s existing stockpile of nuclear weapons. Addressing the United Nations, Zarif stated: “The international community must compel Israel – which has aggression in its very DNA – to promptly accede to the NPT and destroy its nuclear arsenal... And given its six decades of deception and clandestine development of nuclear weapons, it must be compelled to submit to the most intrusive inspection regime that law-abiding members of the NPT observe.” The Foreign Minister further accused the United States, which he referred to “the world’s lone perpetrator of a nuclear attack,” of supporting Israel’s position as “the sole possessor of a nuclear arsenal in our region.” He claimed that Israel’s arsenal posed a threat to the entire Middle East - “all while [Tel Aviv is] crying wolf about proliferation.” Tensions between Iran and Israel have escalated in recent years, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu warning on October 1st that his country was “not ruling out a preliminary strike” against Iran.

Israel is one of nine countries to deploy nuclear weapons, and one of four nuclear weapons states outside the NPT alongside Pakistan, North Korea and India. Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons currently does not violate any international laws, since only the NPT itself restricts countries from developing nuclear arms and Israel never signed the treaty. The country reportedly developed nuclear weapons in the late 1960s, and today is thought to field approximately 200 warheads. Iranian officials have on multiple occasions since 2019 warned that their country, under massive military pressure from the United States, Israel and the wider Western world, could itself withdraw from the NPT - which would legalise its acquisition of nuclear weapons. Several Israeli experts have warned that Iran may indeed have enough fissile materials to construct a single nuclear bomb by the end of 2020, and while Israel’s conventional strike capabilities against the Islamic Republic are limited the possibility of a broader Western attack cannot be discounted. Iran today fields a formidable conventional deterrent built mainly around North Korean ballistic missile technologies, which allow it to strike military facilities using platforms such as the Musudan.