Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 27, 2018. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
September 27, 2018
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday accused Iran of hiding nuclear-related material at a warehouse in Tehran, which he said proved it had not abandoned its nuclear weapons program.
“Today 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 program,” Netanyahu told the annual United Nations General Assembly.
“Since we raided the atomic archive, they’ve been busy cleaning out the atomic warehouse. Just last month they removed 15 kilograms of radioactive material. You know what they did with it?” he said. “They took it out and they spread it around Tehran in an effort to hide the evidence.”
He called on the U.N.’s atomic agency to carry out immediate inspections at a location known to Israel.
Netanyahu in April unveiled what he said was a pile of archives that showed a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program ahead of the United States’ decision to pull out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
He said Iranian officials had started cleaning out the atomic warehouse, but still had a lot of work to do because they “have had at least 15 ship containers, they’re gigantic, 15 ship containers full of nuclear-related equipment and materials stored there,” he said.
“This means that this site contained as much as 300 tonnes – 300 tonnes – of nuclear-related equipment and materiel,” he said.
France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia have stayed in the deal, vowing to save it despite the restoration of U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Netanyahu accused the European powers of appeasing Iran.
“Have these European leaders learned nothing from history? Will they ever wake up?” he said.
(Reporting by John Irish, Arshad Mohammed, Yara Bayoumy and Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish)
