US believes Israel should hold onto its nukes: Haaretz

JERUSALEM (AA) - The U.S. administration believes all countries of the Middle East should recognize the state of Israel before asking it to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, Israeli media reported Monday.

“The Trump administration has taken the position that Israel should not be required to discuss giving up nuclear weapons before all states of the Middle East recognize its right to exist,” Israeli Daily Haaretz quoted “foreign sources” as saying.

Preparatory meetings are now underway in Geneva for a major nuclear non-proliferation conference slated to be held in 2020.

“Israel is not a signatory to the [nuclear non-proliferation] treaty,” Haaretz wrote, “but Egypt has been actively seeking the adoption of resolutions [in this regard] in various international forums.”

In 2010, treaty signatories adopted a resolution -- despite fierce Israeli opposition -- calling for an international conference devoted to making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Finland was to host and organize the event, but Finnish mediators were unable to forge a consensus among would-be participants regarding the conference’s mandate.

In 2015, the U.S. scuttled Egyptian proposals to force such a conference on Israel, with the Obama administration taking the position that disarmament could only be carried out through dialogue with Israel.

According to Haaretz, the Israeli position is that the issue of nuclear weapons “cannot be divorced from security issues in the region or from the state of war that exists between Israel and some other countries”.

According to the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), Israel has produced 115 nuclear warheads since it began manufacturing them in 1963.

The true number of Israel’s nuclear weapons remains a closely guarded secret. Other studies have put the number at some 80 deployable warheads.