A U.N. delegation is in Israel this week to meeti with Israeli officials in an effort to convince it to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, Israeli journalist Yossi Melman wrote in The Jerusalem Post Monday.

Israel has signed the treaty, which is not enforced because it has not been ratified by several signatories, including the United States, Iran and Egypt. North Korea is one of three countries that have not even signed it.

Israel’s having signed the treaty not to test nuclear weapons does not imply admission that it possesses them. Ratifying it also would not be an admission. On the other hand, any cooperation with the United Nations on nuclear weapons could be interpreted by officials a sign that they can pressure the country to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would be an admission of the possession of nuclear weapons and would force opening nuclear facilities for international inspections.

Israel has maintained “nuclear ambiguity,” a policy that does not admit or deny the presence of nuclear weapons, which is widely assumed to be part of the country’s defense weaponry.

Lassina Zerbo, the executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) told Melman, “I believe that eventually Israel will ratify the treaty.” He is meeting with the director-general of Israel Atomic Energy Commission and with outgoing Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz.

The CTBT treaty will not have legal significance until Israel, the United States and six other countries ratify the treaty that concerns countries with nuclear technology.

However, the other countries include not only North Korea but also Pakistan and India, all of which have not signed it.

Israel has two stations for monitoring nuclear tests. Monitors around the world were able to detect North Korea’s nuclear tests several years ago.

Despite Dr. Zerbo’s optimism, Melman wrote, “It appears unlikely that Israel will ratify the CTBT anytime soon.” He quoted an Israel Atomic Energy Commission comment to the Post that Israel is concerned by the use of chemical weapons in Syria and “the refusal of key states in the region – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran – to operate on their soil monitoring stations as it was decided by the CTBTO.”

Israel has repeatedly that it would not be the first country to “introduce” nuclear weapons to the Middle East. Its assumed nuclear stockpile estimated at between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads.

It is also is wide assumed that the Nixon administration made a secret agreement with Prime Minister Golda Meir that the United States would turn a blind eye towards Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons and not press it to sign the NPT on condition that the country does not carry out any nuclear tests.

Bombing Iran is the only effective way to stop its nuclear threat in its tracks and prevent a regional nuclear arms race, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations wrote n The New York Times Thursday.

Bolton previously has called on Israel to bomb Iran. With the United States and the other P5+1 powers on the verge of signing a deal with Iran, Bolton wrote that neither sanctions nor a “bad deal” will prevent what he called a “bad situation” from becoming  the “brink of catastrophe”

Bolton wrote:

The arms race has begun….No way would the Sunni Saudis allow the Shiite Persians to outpace them in the quest for dominance within Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitical hegemony….

Ironically perhaps, Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.

Iran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions. Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish interests are complex and conflicting, but faced with Iran’s threat, all have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential.

He pointed out that “Saudi Arabia has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with South Korea, China, France and Argentina, aiming to build a total of 16 reactors by 2030..” Pakistan, whose leaders recently met with Saudi officials, could supply Egypt and Turkey with nuclear technology, and there always is North Korea ready to make a buck by helping to arm the world with nukes.

“Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program,” Bolton wrote. “Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required.

“Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.”

One of the formidable obstacles to an attack on Iran is the difficulty of reaching its underground nuclear sites, but Bolton argued Thursday that there is no need to destroy Tehran’s entire nuclear infrastructure.

It is enough to set back Iran’s nuclear program by three to five years, he said.

He concluded that if President Barack Obama does not stop Iran’s nuclear development program, his “biggest legacy could be a thoroughly nuclear-weaponized Middle East.”

An agreement that limits the number of centrifuges Iran can possess makes them useless for nuclear energy but very useful for producing a nuclear weapon, according to a former CIA director who now is an analyst for CBS. Michael Morell said on Charlie Rose:

If you are going to have a nuclear weapons program, 5,000 is pretty much the number you need. If you have a power program, you need a lot more. By limiting them to a small number of centrifuges, we are limiting them to the number you need for a weapon.”

Iran has about 19,000 centrifuges, 10,000 of which are operating. The Obama administration’s proposal for a deal with Iran reportedly offered to let Iran enrich uranium with around 6,500 centrifuges. The Obama administration has countered the numbers, some of which are supplied by the Netanyahu administration, by arguing that the type and size of centrifuges are no less important than the number when it comes to enriching uranium.

President Barack Obama thinks that he can negotiate a deal that will keep Iran from making a nuclear weapon for two decades. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says Iran simply is buying time, cannot be trusted to honor any agreement, and that any deal to which it agrees will be a “bad deal.”

Obama supposedly wants to cut the number of centrifuges to approximately 5,000, which Morrell said is enough to produce a nuclear weapon.

PunditFact verified Morell’s claim with several experts, including Georgetown Associate Prof. Matthew Kroenig, who has little faith that Iran will honor any agreement; Arms Control Association official Daryl Kimball; David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security; and Harvard Prof. Matthew Bunn. Bunn told PunditFact:

People think surely you must need a bigger enrichment system to make 90 percent enriched material for bombs than to make 4-5 percent enriched material for power reactors. But exactly the opposite is true. A nuclear reactor, which Iran claims it is building for peaceful purposes, requires tons of uranium. A nuclear bomb can be produced with only 50 pounds of highly enriched uranium.

Bunn explained that producing low-grade uranium makes it possible to produce the enriched stuff, even though it is harder.

That is why Netanyahu told the United Nations three years ago Iran must be allowed zero percent uranium. Once Iran has 5 percent grade uranium, “you’ve already done more than 2/3 of the work of going all the way to 90 percent U-235 for weapons,”

Bunn said. “So the amount of work needed to make bomb material is only a modest amount more per kilogram, and the number of kilograms you need for bombs is 1,000 times less.”

Kimball is more dovish than Kroenig and thinks that since it would take Iran a year to produce enough enriched uranium for one bomb, “That would give you enough time to detect that activity.”

That means the deal, if one is made, comes down to inspections, something which Iran has circumvented for years. Either it allows inspections after removing evidence that its nuclear development is aimed at building a nuclear weapon, or it simply allows them after it has moved its operations to another unknown facility.

The National Coalition of Resistance of Iran insists that the Iranian regime has systematically lied to United Nations nuclear inspectors and has built and is running a secret “Lavizan-3” underground enrichment operation near Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a report last week that was obtained by Reuters and the Associated Press, stated that Iran is living up to its commitment to reduce enrichment activities but did not erase suspicions that it is carrying out research for making a nuclear bomb. The IAEA report said:

Iran has not provided any explanations that enable the agency to clarify the outstanding practical measures.

Obama apparently thinks Iran can be trusted, and that is why he is so incensed that Netanyahu is trying to convince Americans that the president is letting himself be conned – again.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu I sending an urgent warning letter to foreign ministers of the P5+1 countries, hell-bent to make a deal with Iran on its nuclear program.

“In that letter I bring, verbatim, the words of Iran’s ruler Ayatollah Khamenei,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said Monday evening in a statement.

The leader of this country that is depicted by some as moderate, the Islamic State of Iran, has said in the last 48 hours: –one, that he calls for the annihilation of Israel – his words, not mine;

–two, he gives nine ways and reasons of how and why Israel should be annihilated – his words, not mine.

He’s publicly calling for the annihilation of Israel as he is negotiating a nuclear deal with the P5+1 countries.

There is no moderation in Iran. It is unrepentant, unreformed; it calls for Israel’s eradication’

it promotes international terrorism, and as the IAEA report just said, it continues to deceive the international community about its nuclear weapons program.

This terrorist regime in Iran must not be allowed to become a nuclear threshold power. And I call on the P5+1 countries – don’t rush into a deal that would let Iran rush to the bomb.

Iran will be able top produce 30 nuclear bombs a year and 100 within the decade, Minister of Strategy, Intelligence and International Relations Affairs Yuval Steinitz told a defense conference this week.

He told the IsraelDefense C5I Conference that Iran could reach the capability of operating 54,000 centrifuges.

“Iran is not North Korea or Pakistan – its nuclear industry is several dozen times bigger than that of those two countries,” he said. “It will be able to enrich enough uranium to produce 20-30 nuclear bombs each year. In addition, it is already enriching tens of thousands of centrifuges at the facility in Qom.

“Within a decade, it could reach more than 100 nuclear bombs. This is not about the risk of ayatollahs with a few bombs stored in the basement, but a genuine danger to the well being of the world.”

A Palestinian Authority official and senior member of Fatah, headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said on Lebanese television, “We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we did have a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.”

The Palestine Media Watch translated and published the transcription of an interview on the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen television station last week. PMW also provided a video, with English subtitles of the exchange between Rajoub and the interviewer.

Following is the transcription of the interview, provided by PMW, leading up to the comment on nukes.

Lebanese TV moderator: “The American [John Kerry] came to the PA. They are talking about reviving negotiations, about getting back to the table with the Israelis… Will you go back to the negotiations game?”

Jibril Rajoub: “There is no going back to negotiations unless the source of authority is the international resolutions, with a time frame and with the freezing of all unilateral Israeli steps: Jerusalem, the fence, settlements and prisoners.”

Moderator: “You’ve heard Israel’s refusal.”

Jibril Rajoub: “That doesn’t matter. Listen. We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we did have a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.”

Rajoub  is a classic example of Israel’s revolving-door policy of releasing terrorists from jail so they can return to terror, and in this case, explicitly back the annihilation of Israel with a nuclear weapon.

Rajoub started his career as a terrorist when he was a teenager in Hevron, where he was arrested on suspicion of aiding fleeing Egyptian officers.

After his release from jail, he joined Fatah and took on the mission of building up terrorist cells in the Hevron area.

Israeli authorities put him in jail for throwing grenades at an IDF bus but freed him, along with approximately 1,150 other PA terrorists and security prisoners, in exchange for three Israeli hostages in 1985.

He again was jailed and released two other times for returning to terror activity, and the third time around, Israeli authorities deported him to Lebanon in 1988.

He moved up in the Fatah ranks and became an assistant to Yasser Arafat. Israel let him back into the country after the political euphoria of the Oslo Accords.