Tehran back in spotlight
– Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week described what he said was a secret atomic warehouse in Tehran and accused Europe of appeasing Iran as he sought to rally support for US sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu showed an aerial photograph of the Iranian capital marked with a red arrow and pointed to what he said was a previously secret warehouse holding nuclear-related material.
He argued this showed Iran still sought to obtain nuclear weapons, despite its 2015 agreement with world powers to curb its programme in exchange for loosening of sanctions.
Netanyahu spoke more than four months after US President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord, arguing it did too little to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and triggering the resumption of US economic sanctions on Iran.
Netanyahu said the site contained some 15kg of radioactive material that has since been moved, and he called on the UN atomic agency to inspect the location immediately with Geiger counters.
“I am disclosing for the first time that Iran has another secret facility in Tehran, a secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and materiel from Iran’s secret nuclear programme,” Netanyahu said.
“The world will only laugh loudly at this type of false, meaningless and unnecessary speech and false shows,” said Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that there should be more scrutiny on Israel’s nuclear programme.
“No arts and craft show will ever obfuscate that Israel is the only regime in our region with a ‘secret’ and ‘undeclared’ nuclear weapons programme – including an ‘actual atomic arsenal’. Time for Israel to fess up and open its illegal nuclear weapons programme to international inspectors,” Zarif tweeted.
Israel has pushed the US toward isolation, Zarif said.
“In recent days we’ve seen how much the policies that Netanyahu has imposed on America has isolated them in the General Assembly and Security Council,” Zarif said. –