Frank N. von Hippel, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Emad Kiyaei, et al

International Panel on Fissile Materials

A Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East was first proposed in the United Nations General Assembly in 1974 by Iran and Egypt in an effort to roll back Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and to restrain further proliferation in the region by having all states join both a NWFZ and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The proposal drew on the model of the 1967 treaty for a Latin American nuclear weapon free zone. In 1990, the proposal was broadened by Egypt to include a ban on chemical and biological weapons, i.e., to create a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD)-free zone

in the Middle East.