Iran says it will quit NPT as Israel claims ‘aerial superiority’

Iran on Monday said its Parliament was preparing a Bill to leave the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The move reaffirmed the country’s opposition to developing weapons of mass destruction, it said even as tensions with Israel escalated.

Early Monday, Iran fired a new wave of missile attacks on Israel, killing at least five persons. Israel, on its part, claimed that it had achieved “aerial superiority” over Tehran and it could now fly over the Iranian capital with impunity.

Iran’s NPT move risks stoking deeper concerns about its nuclear programme in Western countries which have long suspected Tehran wants to build nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies.

“The government has to enforce Bills, but such a proposal is just being prepared and we will coordinate in the later stages with Parliament,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei.

Israel, which said its military campaign will escalate in the coming days, began bombing Iran on Friday, saying Tehran was on the verge of building a nuclear bomb and targeting the nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

“We are on our way to achieving our two main objectives: eliminating the nuclear threat and eliminating the missile threat,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a message to soldiers at the Tel Nof airbase.

Iran has always said its nuclear programme is peaceful, although the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, declared last week that Tehran was in violation of its NPT obligations.

Israel is presumed to have a sizable nuclear arsenal, but neither confirms nor denies it. It is the only West Asia state that has not signed the NPT.

Israel’s military, which has gutted Iran’s nuclear and military leadership with airstrikes, said on Monday it had killed four senior intelligence officials, including the head of the elite Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit.

Tehran, facing its worst security breach since the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled a US-backed secular monarch, said dozens of alleged saboteurs and “spies" linked to Israel had been arrested since the start of the conflict.

Its currency has lost at least 10 per cent of its value against the US dollar since the start of Israel’s attack.

The dangers of further escalation loomed over a meeting of G7 leaders in Canada, with US President Donald Trump expressing hope on Sunday that a peace deal could be done.

Geopolitical stability in the West Asia has already been undermined by spillover effects of the Gaza war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Iran has watched its longtime foe decimate its regional allies Hamas in the Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah with assassinations of their top leaders.

In total, 24 people in Israel have been killed so far in the Iranian missile attacks, all of them civilians.

The death toll in Iran has reached at least 224, with civilians accounting for 90 per cent of the casualties, an Iranian official said.

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