Abrams: U.S.

must address Iran’s threat to Israel

April 28, 2010
(JTA) -- A former Bush administration official said he hopes the United States will
address the Iranian president's threat to “wipe Israel off the map.”
“Israelis are living under the threat of annihilation every day," Elliot Abrams, the Bush
administration's National Security Council senior director for Near East and North
African Affairs, said April 25 at the Baltimore Zionist District’s "U.S.-Israel Relations In
A New Era" symposium, the Baltimore Jewish Times reported. "If the world does not act,
I believe Israel will act, and I hope the U.S. will.”
“We keep saying it’s unacceptable for Iran to have a bomb, but we don’t mean it. We
mean it’s terrible, we don’t want it. But when Israel says it’s unacceptable, they mean it.”
Steve Rosen, director of the Middle East Forum’s Washington Project and a former top
staffer at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, agreed with Abrams' assessment
“The majority of Americans support force on Iran, yet there’s a taboo against saying we
must force them now,” Rosen said at the seminar. “The U.S. would be more efficient than
Israel at suppressing Iran. We have to have the ability to stare directly into the light
bulb.”

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Israel must sign the NPT'

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 02:26:45 GMT

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Egypt's UN ambassador, Maged Abdel Aziz

Egypt has declared that turning the Middle East into a nuclear weapons-free
zone is the key to solving the dispute over Iran's nuclear program and said
Israel must sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

"Success in dealing with Iran will depend to a large extent on how

successfully we deal with the establishment of a nuclear-free zone" in the
Middle East, Egypt's Ambassador to the UN, Maged Abdel Aziz, told a
luncheon briefing with reporters in New York on Tuesday.

"We refuse the existence of any nuclear weapons in (the Middle East)
whether it is in Iran or whether it is in Israel," AFP quoted Abdel Aziz as
saying.

Egypt is to present a working paper at the NPT review conference, which

opens at the UN headquarters in New York next week, urging implementation
of a 1995 resolution calling for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free
Middle East.

The paper calls on NPT members to "renew their resolve to undertake,

individually and collectively, all necessary measures aimed at the prompt
implementation of the resolution, including the accession by Israel to the
treaty as soon as possible as a non-nuclear weapon state.”

Israel should also place all its nuclear facilities under the full scope of
International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, it adds.

Although there is no linkage between the Iranian and Israeli nuclear issues,
both should be dealt with simultaneously, the Egyptian envoy said.

He also expressed hope that Israel would take part in the NPT review
conference.

Israel has never publicly acknowledged that it possesses nuclear weapons,

but it is believed to have an arsenal of at least 250 nuclear warheads.