October 05, 2018
Israeli Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu charges Iran has a “secret atomic warehouse” tucked away in Tehran where it keeps 300 tons of nuclear gear stashed away.
Speaking at the UN September 27, Netanyahu held up maps and a photo of the alleged hiding place.
Netanyahu’s disclosure came four months after he announced Israel had stolen a “half-ton” of Iranian nuclear documents from a storage site in the Shourabad neighborhood of Tehran. Netanyahu said the new hideaway was just a short distance from the previous one.
“You have to ask yourself a question: Why did Iran keep a secret atomic archive and a secret atomic warehouse?” Netanyahu asked. “What Iran hides, Israel will find.”
Netanyahu didn’t specify what the hidden equipment was, and it was not immediately clear that it would be a violation of the nuclear deal. Under terms of the nuclear deal, Iran is allowed to keep documents and other research.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been monitoring Iran’s compliance with the agreement, rebuffed Israel publicly for the first time. In a statement issued over the name of Director General Yukiya Amano, the agency said it “sends inspectors to sites and locations only when needed.” It said it has searched “all the sites and locations in Iran which it needed to visit.”
It did not address the site Netanyahu had pinpointed, or say if it was aware of it. It said it reviews all information it receives from third parties, “but it does not take any information at face value.”
The prime minister called on the IAEA to investigate the storage site and accused the agency of declining to pursue the half-ton of documents Iran stole from Tehran earlier this year and gave to the IAEA.
“The IAEA still has not taken any action. It has not posed a single question of Iran. It has not demanded to inspect a single new site discovered in that secret archive,” he said.
Netanyahu said Iranian officials had been clearing some radioactive material out of the new hiding site and “spread it around Tehran.” He suggested residents of the capital might want to buy Geiger counters to check if they were in danger.
In a tweet, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif derided the Israeli presentation as an “arts and craft show” by a country that he said needed to come clean about its own nuclear program.
Israel has never publicly acknowledged its own nuclear weapons program—but it has never denied having nuclear weapons either. It has clearly wanted its neighbors to know it has nuclear bombs to use if its neighbors ever tried to wipe it off the map.
Zarif said, “The only purpose of this [announcement] is to undercut the reality that Israel is the biggest threat to the region.”
Netanyahu is known for his showmanship at the UN. In 2012, he famously held up a drawing of a cartoon bomb while discussing Iran’s nuclear program, saying “a red line should be drawn right here” and drawing it with a marker.
At the end of the day’s speeches at the General Assembly September 27, Iran used its “right of reply” to rebut Netanyahu’s accusations. It said, “Today the Israeli showman claimed that he discovered new nuclear facilities in Iran. This is yet another false story.”