International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, 10 Jun 2010

One day after the UN Security Council passed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s renegade nuclear program, Tehran and several Arab states ganged up on Israel at the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday, charging that Israel was the greatest danger in the region and was blocking the Middle East from becoming a nuclear weapons-free zone.

Arab nations joined Iran in demanding that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as the UN watchdog agency in Vienna began debating "Israel" as an agenda item only hours after new sanctions were passed against Tehran at UN headquarters in New York.

"Israel continues to defy the international community through its continued refusal to accede to the Non Proliferation Treaty," charged Sudan's envoy Mahmoud El-Amin. "The Israeli nuclear danger is reinforced by [its] aggressive policies towards Arab countries," he said.

Israel, presumed to have the region’s only nuclear weapons arsenal at present, denounced the move by Iran and the Arabs, saying the effort is being fueled by countries which question Israel's very existence.

Western countries also warned that honing in on Israel could jeopardize broader steps aimed at banning weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. "What the region needs is to come together in a cooperative, consensual way," Washington's envoy Glyn Davies said. "This is not going to happen if the parties of the region engage in name-calling, if they wag fingers at each other." Davies added that Iran was simply out to deflect attention from its own suspect nuclear arms program.

It was the first time the IAEA's policy-making board has tackled the topic since 1991, and comes after the recent month-long NPT review conference put Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity in the spotlight.

On Wednesday evening, the UN Security Council had voted 12-2 with one abstention to impose a fourth round of diplomatic and economic sanctions on Iran to try to persuade it to abandon its nuclear defiance.

"Indeed, Iran is the only NPT signatory in the world -- the only one -- that cannot convince the IAEA that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes," commented US President Barak Obama after the vote. "That’s why the international community was compelled to impose these serious consequences."

"This is the sixth resolution demanding that Iran suspend its enrichments and cooperate with the IAEA," the Israeli Foreign Ministry noted. "Iran blatantly violated all the previous resolutions, and demonstrates blatant disregard for the international community and its institutions. ..The ramifications of a marriage between Iran’s extremist ideology and nuclear weapons would be catastrophic."

Stronger economic sanctions have already been prepared by the US Congress, including heavy sanctions against Iran’s energy industry and financial institutions, as well as a bill which would make it illegal for any company that does business with Iran’s energy sector to do business in the US. Iran’s struggling economy, with unemployment hovering around 20% and crumbling infrastructure, has already felt the effects of previous sanctions and is believed by many analysts to be highly vulnerable to further sanctions.

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