IAEA fails to adopt resolution against Israel's nuclear activities

A resolution calling for the monitoring of Israel’s nuclear activities and facilities has failed to secure enough votes at the general assembly of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

On Thursday, 61 countries, including the United States and the entire member states of the European Union, voted against the resolution, while 43 countries, including Iran, Russia and Turkey, voted in favor, and 33 states, including Brazil and India, abstained.

The resolution, titled “Israel’s nuclear capabilities,” was presented by the Egyptian envoy to the IAEA at the annual plenum of the UN nuclear watchdog and demanded that the Tel Aviv regime join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and open its nuclear facilities to UN inspectors. The resolution included a clause describing Israel’s nuclear arsenal as “a permanent threat to peace and security in the region.”

“All member states of the agency are called on to cooperate in order to remedy this situation resulting from the fact that Israel alone possesses nuclear capabilities which are undeclared and not subject to international control,” the text of the resolution read.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that his efforts to lobby fellow leaders had thwarted the move.

“I personally spoke with over 30 presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers,” Netanyahu said in the Thursday night statement.

The Israeli regime has never allowed any inspections of its nuclear facilities and continues to defy international calls to join the NPT.

Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, on September 4 revealed details about “one of Israel’s greatest secrets” regarding its clandestine nuclear activities. 

In a lengthy interview broadcast on Israeli TV, Vanunu explained how he once exposed the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal and elaborated on a potential disaster that could emanate from Israel’s notorious Dimona nuclear plant.

The new revelations by Vanunu, in fact, amount to Israel’s acknowledgment of possessing nuclear warheads.

Vanunu had unveiled details of the Israeli regime’s nuclear weapons program to the British media back in 1986.

Israeli intelligence agents drugged and abducted Vanunu in Italy in 1986 and then transported him to the occupied territories for further prosecution. He spent the subsequent 18 years behind bars, 11 of which in solitary confinement. He was freed in 2004 under stringent conditions. 

Vanunu still faces a travel ban, among other restrictions. He insists that he wants to annul his citizenship. Israelis have repeatedly rejected Vanunu’s request for leaving the occupied territories and reuniting with his family in Norway.

A report released in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in September 2013 also confirmed that Israel possesses at least 80 operative nuclear warheads and has enough material to produce up to 190 more.

In the reports, nuclear weapons proliferation experts Robert Norris and Hans Kristensen estimated that Israel halted its production of nuclear warheads back in 2004 “once it reached around 80 munitions.”

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