Zarif: Israel Redlines on Iran’s Nuclear Program Defiance of Int'l Law
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s foreign minister denounced Israel’s attempts to set redlines on Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program as disrespect for the international law.
“Is this not insolence towards the international law and the Non-Proliferation Treaty that (Israel) a non-member of NPT, which has massive nuclear arsenals and poses major existential threats to the entire Middle East region, sets redlines on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program?” said Mohammad Javad Zarif in an address to the 17th Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Algeria on Wednesday.
Zarif also said attempts are underway to portray Iran as a threat to the region and the world, but all those allegations have repeatedly turned out to be “total lies”.
He also described the anti-Iran campaign as a tactic to divert attention from the real threats facing the Middle East region and the world.
The minister once again underlined Tehran's steadfast opposition to nuclear weapons, saying that Iran, as an NPT member, believes that nuclear arms would undermine the national security.
Israel and its staunch ally the United States accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Tel Aviv, which is widely believed to be the possessor of the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, has also threatened to launch a military strike against Iran over its nuclear energy program.
Tehran, a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, strongly rejects the allegations and says it needs the atomic energy program for peaceful purposes including generating electricity and producing radio medicines. Iran has also warned that it will give a “crushing response” to any possible aggression against its territorial integrity.
Most experts estimate that Israel has between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, largely based on information leaked to the Sunday Times newspaper in the 1980s by Mordechai Vanunu, a former worker at the country's Dimona nuclear reactor.
Meanwhile, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has also alluded to Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal in comments in December 2006, a week after then US Defense Secretary Robert Gates used a similar form of words during a Senate hearing.
In May 2008, ex-US President Jimmy Carter said Israel had at least 150 atomic weapons in its arsenal.
