Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to tell whether his country has nuclear weapons, CNN reported on May 1.
During the CNN interview Netanyahu didn’t clarify the Israeli nuclear possesses after he was pressed repeatedly by the interviewer Chris Cuomo to answer this question:
“Well, you can make all your assumptions. One thing is clear: Israel is not threatening the annihilation of any country.”
Netanyahu stated that Israel would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict. He insisted that he did not seek a military confrontation with Iran as “nobody is seeking that kind of development.”
Israel doesn’t admit officially the possessing of nuclear weapon. According to the data of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Israel has 80 weapons. 50 of them are for the reentry vehicle of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) Jericho II.
On April 30, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of having a secret program to produce nuclear weapons as well as expanding the range of its nuclear-capable missiles. Netanyahu also revealed “55,000 pages” of documents and “183 CDs” allegedly copied from a “highly secret location” in Iran and detailed an effort to build nuclear arms.
Teheran claimed these accusations absurd and the Netanyahu’s performance – a show planned for the US President Donald Trump to influence on the forthcoming decision over the Iranian nuclear deal. Trump is expected to make the decision on May 12.
The permanent Russian representative to the UN in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov stated that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should scrutinize the documents first.
