‘Clear Warning’: Israel welcomes IAEA’s censuring of Iran’s nuclear activities
Israel has welcomed the resolution adopted by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calling on Iran to urgently fulfil its legal obligations in the context of its safeguards violations.
The UN nuclear watchdog passed a resolution on Wednesday, which was adopted by an overwhelming majority of 30 in favour, with only Russia and China voting against it, censuring Iran over its nuclear program. Drafted by Britain, France, Germany, and the US, the resolution accuses Iran of not cooperating with the IAEA.
“The Board’s decision is a first and necessary step towards the goal of restoring Iran’s compliance with its safeguards obligations,” the Foreign Ministry stated, saying that “the time has come for the international community to support the agency’s integrity and professionalism and to act against Iran with all the means at its disposal.”
“Iran’s pursuit of military nuclear capabilities has never ceased. Iran continues to systematically violate all its international commitments, and is working tirelessly to hide evidence and disrupt investigations in order to deceive the international community,” the Ministry warned.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the decision “is a significant decision that exposes Iran’s true face.”
“The Board of Governors’ decision determines that Iran is neither cooperating with the IAEA nor obeying its directives and is thus preventing the agency from fulfilling its important function and acting against military nuclear activity. The many countries that voted for the decision cooperated in order to block and prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons,” he said.
“Today’s IAEA vote is a clear warning light to Iran: If Iran continues its activity, the leading countries must bring the matter back to the UN Security Council,” he demanded.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz stated that the IAEA “took an important step in its decision to censure Iran following its noncompliance with inspections, and in response to nuclear activities in various sites spread across the country. Iran has demonstrated once again that it threatens both regional and global peace.”
In addition to the condemnation, he called on the international community to “take concrete steps. Every monitoring device that is turned off should be met with diplomatic and economic sanctions. We must stand united and work closely together in facing Iranian regional and global aggression.”
He was relating to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran’s (AEOI) announcement Wednesday that it has removed two cameras of IAEA that were monitoring the country’s nuclear sites.
The AEOI claimed that the IAEA “has not appreciated Iran’s goodwill gesture and has instead viewed Tehran’s voluntary move as part of its undertakings.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said that the “condemnation of Iran for its nuclear deception reveals the true face of the rogue Iranian regime and its intention to acquire nuclear weapons.”
“If murderous, radical Iran becomes a nuclear threshold state, it would endanger the whole world. The UN Security Council must hold Iran accountable and use all possible means to stop Iran’s race toward an atomic bomb,” he demanded.
The US, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom released a joint statement welcoming the resolution “responding to Iran’s insufficient cooperation with the IAEA on serious and outstanding safeguards issues relating to Iran’s obligations under its NPT-required safeguards agreement.”
The overwhelming majority vote “sends an unambiguous message to Iran that it must meet its safeguards obligations and provide technically credible clarifications on outstanding safeguards issues. Today’s resolution affirms the Board’s support for the independent, professional and impartial efforts of the IAEA to uphold the international safeguards system, which is essential to all of our security.”
“We urge Iran to heed the call of the international community to fulfil its legal obligations and cooperate with the IAEA to fully clarify and resolve issues without further delay. If Iran does this and the Director-General [Rafael Grossi] is able to report that the unresolved safeguards issues are no longer outstanding, we would see no need for further Board consideration and action on these issues,” they stated ominously.
Any nation can maintain weapons for self defense. Israel is nuclear armed as are USA, Russia, UK, France, India, Pakistan, and China that we know of. Ukraine did have nuclear arms until about 20 years ago but Russia and USA encouraged Ukraine to give them up and now Ukraine has no nuclear deterrent. The USA sold out Ukraine and Russia is pleased.