Iran has vehemently condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat to use nukes, saying it reserves the right to deliver a resolute response to the occupying entity under international law.
In letters sent Monday to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, as well as the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council, Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani urged the international community to break their silence in the face of Tel Aviv’s “reckless and dangerous” rhetoric.
On Friday, Netanyahu called for a “credible nuclear threat” against Iran in an address to the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. However, the hawkish premier’s office later said that he misread the line and meant to say a “credible military threat.”
“While vehemently and unequivocally condemning the Israeli regime’s perilous threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran …, the Islamic Republic firmly reaffirms its legitimate and inherent rights, in full accordance with international law and the United Nations Charter, to respond resolutely to any threats and unlawful acts” by Tel Aviv, Iravani wrote.
“Iran also declares that it will not hesitate to exercise these rights to defend its security, national interests, and people.”
The envoy further noted that the international community must not remain indifferent to the bellicose anti-Iran threat from an illegitimate regime that wages aggressions, carries out apartheid policies, and sponsors terrorism, while possessing an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction alongside advanced conventional weaponry.
“The Israeli regime shamelessly defies repeated international calls to join legally binding instruments that prohibit weapons of mass destruction and obstructs the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East, a proposal that Iran has championed since 1974. Therefore, this alarming situation demands a robust response from the international community,” he added.
Israel, which pursues a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, is estimated to have 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, making it the Middle East’s sole possessor of non-conventional arms.
The usurping entity has, however, refused to either allow inspections of its military nuclear facilities or sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
‘Nuke-armed Israel must be forced to join NPT’
Also on Tuesday, Zahra Ershadi, Iran’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, called on the international community to force Israel to join the NPT.
“The Israeli regime, with the support of the United States, has consistently opposed all initiatives aimed at establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East,” she said during the General Assembly’s annual high-level commemoration of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
“The international community must hold this regime accountable through resolutions and decisions that call upon this regime to renounce its possession of nuclear weapons, accede to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon party, and subject all its nuclear facilities and activities to comprehensive IAEA safeguards,” Ershadi added, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
