Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard

22/09/2007

For the first time, Iran directly confronts Israel on nuclear arms

Iran demanded that United Nations inspectors visit Israel to investigate its nuclear capability while Israel accused Tehran of lying in a bitter debate at an assembly of the UN atomic watchdog in Vienna on Friday

United Nations officials at a 149-nation meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna said they had no memory of the two rival nations ever engaging each other directly at previous meetings

Israel is widely assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, though it has never confirmed or denied this

It is also one of just three states to shun the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, along with India and Pakistan.

Arab countries and Iran railed at "persistent international double standards and silence" over Israeli nuclear exclusivity in the Middle East.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's admission of a nuclear arsenal in a German media interview