GENEVA (Dispatches) -- Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva has called on the international community to work towards ending nuclear tests and eliminating atomic weapons.
“Nuclear testing is a threat to our planet and future generations,” Ali Bahreini said in an X post on Thursday, on the occasion of the International Day against Nuclear Tests.
“On the International Day against Nuclear Tests, let’s pledge to protect our world by advocating for a complete end to nuclear tests and total elimination of NWs,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons.
“Each nuclear explosion is a step backward in the journey towards a world free of nuclear weapons. Today, more than ever, we need a global commitment to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons,” Bahreini wrote in a separate post on X in Persian. 
In 2009, the UN General Assembly declared August 29 the International Day against Nuclear Tests by unanimously adopting Resolution 64/35.
The document calls for increasing awareness and education “about the effects of nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions and the need for their cessation as one of the means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.” 
The United States is the only country on Earth that has used nuclear weapons in wartime.
On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing thousands instantly and about 140,000 by the end of the year. Three days later, it dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000.