FM slams West's indifference toward expansion of Israel’s Dimona nuclear bomb facility

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday criticized silence of the big powers regarding the Zionist regime of Israel’s latest move on expanding its ‘Dimona’ facilities that is the only nuclear bomb factory in the region.

“Israel is expanding Dimona, the region's only nuclear bomb factory,” Zarif wrote in a message on his Twitter account referring to the reports by Western media about development of the Dimona facilities by the Zionist regime.

He further mentioned the Twitter accounts of the US President Joe Biden, International Atomic Energy Agency, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmannuel Macron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel asking them if they feel any concern about the report.

“@POTUS, @iaeaorg, , @BorisJohnson, @EmmanuelMacron, #AngelaMerkel

“Gravely concerned?

 “Concerned? A little?

“Care to comment?

“I thought so,” Zarif tweeted.

Latest reports coming from Israel said that Tel Aviv is carrying out a major expansion of its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where it has historically made the fissile material for its nuclear arsenal.

“Construction work is evident in new satellite images published on Thursday by the International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM), an independent expert group,” The Guardian reported on Thursday.

Moreover, Iran's Mehr News Agency wrote on Saturday that the new construction has been carried out near the Dimona nuclear power plant and the nuclear recycling station, for which an area of 140 meters long and 50 meters wide has been excavated, and the nature of these constructions is still unknown.

Based on IPFM report, the construction activities started in late 2018 or early 2019 and are now coming to an end and have not been observed before, because the last image of the Dimona nuclear site, according to Google Earth images, dates back to 2011.

The Dimona was built in the 1950s and type of its activity was hiding until 1986, when a Zionist nuclear scientist named Mordechai Vanunu fled to Britain and made a revelation on the nuclear site.

Dimona, which is widely believed to be key to Israel’s nuclear arms manufacturing program, was built with covert assistance from the French government and activated sometime between 1962 and 1964, according to reports, Press TV wrote.

Israel has acknowledged the existence of the Dimona nuclear reactor, but neither confirms nor denies the purpose of the facility, which is assumed to be the manufacturing of nukes.

Turning a deaf ear to international calls for nuclear transparency, the regime has so far refused, with the US' invariable support, to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that is aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Source: Iran Daily