Tehran backs proposal on nuclear weapons convention

In a United Nations General Assembly meeting on Monday, Heydar-Ali Balouji, a diplomat in Iran’s permanent mission in the UN, said that the repeated failures of revision in the Treaty on the Non‑Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) showed that there was no vision for complete elimination of nuclear arms.

Nuclear disarmament has been on the international agenda since 1946 when the General Assembly adopted its first resolution calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and since the NPT entered into force in 1970, Balouji said.

However, he said, the nuclear-weapon states undertook a legal obligation to negotiate to cease the nuclear arms race and disarm.

“But the nuclear arsenals have exceeded 13,000 weapons, with the number and quality of these devastative weapons set to increase in the coming years,” he added.

The US and the UK, in particular, are in front of this haste and all nuclear-weapon states are actively modernizing their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems, but none are engaged in disarmament negotiations, according to Balouji.

The Iranian diplomat added that the irrelevant plans proposed by the US or other NWSs would not lead to nuclear disarmament and that disarmament needed political will and developing a time-bound updated disarmament action plan.

“We strongly support the NAM proposal to commence negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear weapons convention on the total elimination of nuclear weapons in the Conference on Disarmament,” Balouji said.

He also highlighted the regional aspect of disarmament failure and Israel’s defying the international calls to accede to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon party without any precondition.