At a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Arab nations urged Israel on Thursday to join the global Non-Proliferation Treaty and repeated their calls for a nuclear-free Middle East. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a stockpile of nuclear weapons, but Israel has never confirmed nor denied it has nuclear weapons. By shunning the forty-year-old Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel has not had to reject atomic arms or allow the IAEA to probe all of its nuclear sites. Thursday’s meeting marked the first time the IAEA’s policy-making board tackled the topic of Israel’s nuclear arsenal since 1991.

Mohamed Mostafa Fawzy, Egypt’s ambassador to the IAEA: “So what we are discussing here is how to apply the safeguards to every state in the Middle East. This is a precise point that we have to deal with, applying the safeguards. So it’s not only that we are asking Israel to join the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] or not. We are asking for the application of the safeguards agreements on all states in the Middle East.”

Glyn Davies, the US Ambassador to the IAEA, defended Israel’s stance on nuclear weapons.

Glyn Davies: “Israel has broken no agreements nor failed to fulfill obligations to the agency. Discussion of this item distracts our collective attention from other pressing matters before the board. Premier among those is Iran, which stands in violation of the NPT and IAEA safeguards obligations and of resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors and the UN Security Council.”