TEHRAN – Iran has called on the United Nations Security Council to immediately move to dismantle Israel’s nuclear weapons following dangerous remarks by an Israeli minister who called for nuking the Gaza Strip.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian made the remarks in a post on the X platform, formerly Twitter. 

His post comes after Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu urged the Israeli government to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas of the world with a population of 2.3 million. 

Speaking in an interview on Sunday, Eliyahu claimed that there were “no non-combatants” in the besieged strip and that using a nuclear bomb on the Palestinian enclave was one of the possibilities.”

Amir Abdollahian said the remarks are indicative of Israel’s failure. 

“Israel's regime minister's statement to use atomic bomb shows the real defeat of the regime against the resistance,” he said.

The Iranian foreign minister added, “The UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency must take immediate and uninterrupted action to disarm this barbaric and apartheid regime. Tomorrow is late. Full responsibility for this genocide lies with the White House.”

Eliyahu’s blatantly genocidal remarks are in harmony with statements by other senior Israeli officials. Earlier, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said “the entire nation” in Gaza is responsible for the October 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance groups, implying that all the population of Gaza should be collectively punished. Also, Israeli War Minister Yoav Gallant went so far as to describe the people of Gaza as “human animals.”

But while some Israelis criticized Eliyahu’s remarks, no one in Israel or in the world reproached Herzog and Gallant for their catastrophic portrayal of the Palestinian people. This genocidal rhetoric has come literally into practice over the last month in Gaza, where Israel has been on a killing spree that claimed the lives of more than 10,000 civilians. The Israeli carnage has been so massive that the UN announced Monday that its staff fatalities broke a record. 

“Scores of aid workers have been killed since October 7 including 88 UNRWA colleagues – the highest number of United Nations fatalities ever recorded in a single conflict,” the UN said.  More than 100 attacks against health care have been reported, according to the UN. 

But Israel seems to be eager to take more Palestinian lives as part of their strategy to inflict high human costs in order to achieve deterrence vis-à-vis a stateless nation. 

The Israeli leaders have long used this strategy over the course of Israeli history. They targeted civilians almost in all their wars with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and above all with the Palestinian people. But in all this, they miserably failed to achieve deterrence as resistance continued to rattle the Israeli regime to the core.

Their strategy is based on a simple idea: killing civilians en masse to put pressure on the enemy, whether it’s the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies or the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance groups.

And when they fail to succeed, they often dangle the possibility of using nuclear weapons. Eliyahu’s inflammatory statement was not the first time the Israeli regime has threatened to use its illegal nuclear bombs. 

Actually, this is the second time that senior Israeli officials have entertained the disastrous idea of using nuclear bombs. The first Israeli official who threatened to use the nuclear bomb was none other than Moshe Dayan, a veteran war criminal who served as the Israeli defense minister during the October 1973 war between Egypt and Israel. 

Of historical note, Israel invaded Egypt in June 1967 and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, which led Egypt to wage a war of attrition with the occupying Israeli forces up until it succeeded in defeating Israel in October 1973, when Egypt, after much planning and preparation, caught the Israeli forces stationed in the Sinai off guard in the first Arab military victory over Israel. 

Facing huge loss and defeat, Dayan pushed then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to use nuclear weapons against Egypt on the second day of the 1973 war. This was revealed for the first time by Arnon Azaryahu, who served as an aide to another minister in the wartime security cabinet, Israel Galili.

“Since the situation is very bad, it would be worthwhile, since we don’t have a lot of time and a lot of options, that we prepare to show the nuclear option,” Azaryahu quoted Dayan as saying at a meeting of top Israeli officials during the heady days of the 1973 war. 

Following Eliyahu’s remarks, Israeli officials sought to falsely portray the extremist minister as crazy who does not represent Israel’s strategic thinking. While it’s obvious that the Eliyahu bomb is not going to be dropped on Gaza, the Israeli nuclear arsenal remains a strategic threat to all countries of the region, especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran. 

Israel has shown that its nuclear arsenal is ready to be used against civilians who are already stateless and besieged. 

Over the last month, Israel used a wide range of “conventional” weapons – some of which are internationally prohibited such as white phosphorous bombs- to wreak unbelievable havoc on civilians in Gaza all while laying strict siege on the enclave. Some military estimates say that the amount of ammunition Israel dropped on Gaza is equal to more than nuclear bombs. And the civilian casualties are already exceeding 10,000. So, if despite all this death and destruction, Israel feels it needs an actual nuclear bomb to completely destroy Gaza, then how it will feel when confronting a well-organized, fully armed army? 

The 1973 war offers some hints. 

It’s no surprise that the Arab world fiercely reacted to Eliyahu’s bombshell. Aside from official reactions, popular Egyptian night shows, for instance, extensively addressed the strategic threat posed by Israel’s nuclear bombs. And the fact that these bombs are in possession of a bunch of extremists makes their threat even more dangerous and imminent.

With Israel insisting on targeting civilians and disregarding international law, the Israel nuclear threat is expected to further deepen discussions on security in the region. Some Israelis may argue that he made a slip of the tongue. It was actually a slip, but certainly a Freudian slip.