Iran says ‘no obligation’ to let UN nuclear watchdog into certain sites

Tehran has no obligation to grant the UN’s nuclear watchdog access to sites in Iran when it deems that requests are based on “fabricated information,” Iran’s UN ambassador in Vienna says.

“Intelligence services’ fabricated information… creates no obligation for Iran to consider such requests,” says a statement from Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Vienna, Kazem Gharib Abadi.

It comes a day after a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in which it reprimanded Iran for refusing access to two sites which diplomats believe could be connected to Iran’s historic nuclear activity.

Gharib Abadi also accuses the US and Israel of trying to “exert pressure on the Agency… in order to distort the proactive and constructive cooperation” between the IAEA and Iran.

Israel has claimed that a trove of information obtained by its intelligence services contains new information on a previous nuclear weapons program in Iran.

The two sites that the IAEA was denied access to were among three locations that the agency had been raising questions over since last summer.

In a second report issued on Tuesday the IAEA reported Iran was continuing to breach the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord with world powers but did not report any restrictions in access to nuclear facilities.

— AFP