Why can Israel have nuclear weapons and not Iran?
This is a simple question to which a lot of Turkish people would want to hear an answer from you. AMBASSADOR SCHULTE: There is a very simple answer, and then there is a more complicated answer. I will give you both. The simplest answer is that Israel never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So it never agreed to not have a nuclear weapons capability. Iran signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Iran has been failing to carry out its obligations. That is the simple, legalistic answer. Let me give you a slightly more complicated answer. The United States has called upon all countries that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty including Israel to sign on to the agreement as non-nuclear weapons states. So said in a more simple fashion, we called on all countries that are not NPT members to give up nuclear weapons.We have also supported the vision of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. But the greatest impediment to that vision today is the atomic ambitions of Iran’
