Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “crying wolf” after Netanyahu revealed the existence of a previously unknown Iranian nuclear facility.
Netanyahu and the United States, Zarif wrote on Twitter, are seeking a war with Iran.
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In a televised address earlier on Monday, Netanyahu had revealed that Tehran conducted experiments at a secret nuclear facility in central Tehran in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).
“Today, we reveal that yet another secret nuclear site was exposed in the archives that we brought from Tehran,” said Netanyahu on Monday, referring to the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled out of Iran by Israeli intelligence and revealed in April 2018. “In this site, Iran conducted experiments to develop nuclear weapons. This is the site near Abadeh, south of Isfahan.”
When Iran figured out the site had been discovered, they tried to hide the evidence, he continued.
“When Iran realized that we uncovered the site here’s what they did: they destroyed the site. They just wiped it out. … They destroyed the evidence or at least tried to destroy the evidence,” said Netanyahu.
Also on Monday, Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. Majid Takht Ravanchi told the U.N. General Assembly at the commemoration of International Day Against Nuclear Tests that the United States was in violation of the NPT due to its modernization of its own nuclear arsenal. The United States’ “irresponsible policies” are “detrimental to all international efforts towards nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and therefore must come to an end,” he said, adding that the world should move towards “the noble objective of the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
Israel has long warned that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons. In 2015, the United States and Europe entered into a treaty providing Iran with major financial incentives and eliminating sanctions in exchange for promises that Iran would subject itself to the oversight of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and forgo the enrichment of uranium necessary to create nuclear weapons.
However, the Trump administration withdrew from the agreement in 2018, accusing Iran of failing to comply with the deal.
Iran responded by upping its enrichment activity.