Qatar has renewed its calls for Israel’s nuclear facilities to be brought under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and for Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear state, which would require Israel to abolish its nuclear stockpile.
Israel has a covert nuclear weapons program that it does not officially acknowledge and is estimated to have somewhere between 90 and 300 warheads.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said that Doha’s ambassador to the UN in Vienna, Jassim Yacoub al-Hammadi, made a statement concerning Israel’s nuclear program during a meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors.
“Hammadi underscored the need for the international community and its institutions to uphold their commitments under resolutions of the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the IAEA, and the 1995 Review Conference of the NPT, which called on Israel to subject all its nuclear facilities to IAEA safeguards,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The statement added that Hammadi “pointed out that all Middle Eastern countries, except Israel, are parties to the NPT and have effective safeguard agreements with the Agency.”
The IAEA’s Board of Governors often censures Iran through Western-drafted resolutions for its nuclear program even though it is subject to IAEA inspections, and, despite the hype over uranium enrichment levels, there’s no evidence Tehran is seeking a bomb.
On the other hand, Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program, which is not subject to any inspections, rarely gets any attention. This is largely due to the fact that the US also does not acknowledge its existence and doesn’t put any pressure on Israel to sign the NPT.
The US cannot recognize the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons since foreign assistance laws prohibit military aid to nuclear-armed countries that are not subject to IAEA inspections.
