Press TV – May 10, 2014
An Iranian official says Israel’s policies are the key reason behind the failure of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to fulfill its objectives.
“Non-Aligned Movement countries backed by many other states firmly believe that the Zionist regime [of Israel]’s policies and its opposition to the establishment of a region free from nuclear weapons in the Middle East is the most important contributor to the NPT’s failure to achieve its goals in [the field of] non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Director General for Political Affairs Hamid Ba’eedinejad said on Saturday.
Signatories to the NPT are sharply divided over putting Israel under pressure in order to force the regime to sign the treaty and agree to the establishment of a Middle East region free from nuclear arms as well as weapons of mass destruction, he said.
The official underlined that certain Israeli allies oppose the NPT signatories’ unanimous stance on the necessity of Tel Aviv signing the treaty.
The Iranian official noted that the third session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in New York failed to yield any tangible results over the implementation of the treaty. Ba’eedinejad had headed the Iranian delegation to the event.
Israel is widely believed to be the only possessor of nuclear arms in the Middle East, with an estimated stockpile of 200-400 nuclear warheads. In its Yearbook 2012, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said that Israel possesses at least 80 “highly operational” nuclear warheads.
Israel, which rejects all regulatory international nuclear agreements, maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity over its nuclear activities and refuses to allow its nuclear facilities to come under international regulatory inspections.