Qatar calls to bring ‘all of Israel’s nuclear facilities’ under supervision of UN nuclear watchdog

The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that Doha has urged the UN nuclear watchdog to bring “all of Israel’s nuclear facilities” under its supervision.

The Qatari ambassador to Austria, Jassim Yacoub al-Hammadi, delivered a statement on the matter during a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna earlier this week.

Israel has never publicly acknowledged that it possesses nuclear weapons, but is widely believed to have around 90 in its arsenal, according to an assessment from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in June 2024.

“Hammadi underscored the need for the international community and its institutions to uphold their commitments under resolutions of the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the IAEA, and the 1995 Review Conference of the NPT, which called on Israel to subject all its nuclear facilities to IAEA safeguards,” the Qatari statement says.

The Qatari ambassador also appealed for “intensified international efforts” to bring Israel into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear state,” the foreign ministry says, adding that “all Middle Eastern countries, except Israel, are parties to the NPT and have effective safeguard agreements with the Agency.”