Today, Tuesday. Israel's Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations Gilad Erdan delivered a speech in the UN General Assembly criticizing Syria's use of weapons of mass destruction and the Iranian regime's consistent violations of its commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Additionally Ambassador Erdan pointed out that Iran prevents the IAEA from obtaining reliable information from its nuclear sites and that the Iranian nuclear program is at a critical stage.
"The Iranian nuclear program has reached a critical stage - a stage that demands the action of true leadership. For over two years now, Iran has been violating its nuclear obligations. By now, its violations in regard to enrichment, stockpiling, uranium metal and R&D are so extensive that they have completely hollowed the Iranian obligations of their essence," Erdan said.
"The inaction taken against Iranian nuclear advances only serves to bolster Iran’s resolve to continue its flagrant violations. Coming to terms with Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state puts world peace in the balance and will remain a black stain on the history of the free world."
"Iran has also violated its commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards under the Comprehensive Safeguard Agreement and the Additional Protocol. We are now at the point where the IAEA Director General recently stated that the agency can no longer maintain continuity of knowledge.
"Furthermore, four different cases of safeguards issues related to undeclared nuclear material, which have been under investigation for two years now, remain unresolved. All answers given by Iran regarding the investigation have been deemed 'technically not credible' by the IAEA.
Turning to Syria, Erdan called on the international community to hold the Assad regime to account for repeatedly using weapons of mass destruction on its own people. "Last April, a second report on the Syrian use of chemical weapons was published by the Identification and Investigation Team. Along with the report from April 2020, these two reports attribute responsibility for four different chemical attacks on civilians in 2017 and 2018 to the Syrian government which acceded to the CWC and avowed to forgo its entire chemical weapons program."
"It is vital that the international community remains vigilant in dealing with this challenge of the non-compliance by Syria and also continue investigating Syria's current abilities and activities in regard to its chemical weapons program," Erdan said.