DUBAI, November 8. /TASS/. Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu’s remark about the option of unleashing a nuclear strike on the Gaza Strip may be seen as confirmation that Israel does possess nuclear weapons, Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said.
"An Israeli regime official has once again confessed that his country possesses nuclear weapons. And what is even more important, by threatening the oppressed and innocent people of the Gaza Strip, the regime challenged the basic principles of international law and the UN Charter," Eslami pointed out in an interview with Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
"The International Atomic Energy Agency and especially its director general should take an independent stance on the issue," he went on to say. "There is a need to immediately condemn these threats, clarify their potential consequences and notify the UN Security Council of the incident," the AEOI chief added.
"Some governments condemned the Israeli minister’s remark, but international organizations, including the UN, also should stop being silent in the face of such statements, which threaten <...> global security," Eslami emphasized.
On November 5, a Kol Barama radio station host interviewing Eliyahu asked the official on air whether a nuclear bomb should be dropped on Gaza. In response, the Israeli minister said that: "It is one of the possibilities." The official noted later that, "it’s clear to any sane person that the nuclear bomb remark was a metaphor," but Israel "definitely needs to give a strong and disproportionate response to terrorism." In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu from participating in Cabinet meetings and dismissed his statement about the option of using nuclear weapons in Gaza as "not based in reality."
Several Middle Eastern countries, namely Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria, earlier decried Eliyahu’s remark. The Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "not dismissing the minister from the government immediately and sufficing with freezing his membership reflects the level of indifference in all humanitarian, moral, religious and legal standards and values in the Israeli government."