What a shock.
Samples taken by investigators from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency at the so-called “secret atomic warehouse” in Tehran – where Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told them to look – have come up glowing.
Iran has yet to explain those traces of uranium, says the nuclear watchdog agency, according to two diplomats who are tightly connected with the agency’s inspection work, and who spoke exclusively with the Reuters news agency.
Iran Refusing to Answer IAEA Questions on Secret Nuclear Facility
The IAEA has asked Iran to explain those traces, but Tehran has provided no response, according to the diplomats. In fact, Iran has further violated the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal it signed with world powers.
More than a year ago, Israel’s prime minister called on the IAEA to visit that site in Tehran, warning that it had housed 15 kg (33 lb) of unspecified radioactive material that had since been removed, but pointing out that uranium could probably still be detected.
Full Transcript of Netanyahu’s Iran’s Nuclear Expose
Prior to his speech to the UN General Assembly last year, the prime minister revealed the results of a spectacular Mossad operation that ended with the capture of an entire cache of secret Iranian nuclear data files that were stored at a secret facility in Shirobad.
Israeli intelligence agents translated the files and provided the information to world powers in order to enlighten and warn them about the violations of the nuclear deal that Iran had been carrying out, along with the highly advanced nuclear technology that had already taken place prior to the JCPOA negotiations that Iran had lied about in the first place.
Inspectors from the IAEA did indeed visited the secret Iranian nuclear site at Turquzabad revealed by Netanyahu, Reuters reported, taking environmental samples from the site at that time. The IAEA did not make the information public, nor was the information shared during a quarterly meeting of the agency’s 35-member nation Board of Governors this summer.
The diplomats who spoke with Reuters say those samples showed traces of uranium – which Iran is enriching, and which can be used to make a nuclear weapon of mass destruction.
Although one of the diplomats added that there are many possible explanations for the presence of the uranium at the site, Iran has offered none whatsoever to the IAEA.
Reuters adds the IAEA did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Iranian officials. Apparently no request for comment was sent to Prime Minister Netanyahu.