Iran's foreign minister said Thursday that the US and its ally Israel constitute a nuclear threat to the Middle East, on the 75th anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima.

"Today, US & Israeli nukes threaten our region," Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter.

The first atomic bomb deployed in warfare was dropped on the western city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay, killing about 140,000 people.

"75 years ago today, the US gained the infamy of becoming the 1st and ONLY user of nuclear weapons. And against innocents," Zarif said.

Israel is believed to be the Middle East's sole nuclear-armed power, though it has never acknowledged it.

Zarif's words come in a context of tensions between Tehran and Washington, which unilaterally pulled out of a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and reimposed sanctions.

The US and Israel accuse Iran of being set on developing a nuclear bomb, a charge always denied by Tehran.

Iran and the US came to the brink of direct confrontation in January, when a US drone strike killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.

"It's long overdue to end the nuclear nightmare & the MAD doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction," Zarif added, alluding to a Cold War theory that the threat of a nuclear holocaust generates a disincentive for two nuclear armed powers to go to war.

Washington and Tehran have had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980.

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75 years on, Japan bomb survivors make final pleas for abolition
Tokyo (AFP) Aug 4, 2020
As Japan marks 75 years since the devastating attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the last generation of nuclear bomb survivors are working to ensure their message lives on after them. The "hibakusha" - literally "person affected by the bomb" - have for decades been a powerful voice calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. There are an estimated 136,700 left, many of whom were infants or unborn children at the time of the attacks. The average age of a survivor now is a little over 83, ... read more