“Iran is totally determined to complete its nuclear weapons program,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said on Saturday, referring to a recent International Atomic Energy Agency report that, for the first time in nearly 20 years, explicitly found Tehran guilty of violating its non-proliferation obligations.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog “presents a stark picture that serves as a clear warning sign,” the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
The report “strongly reinforces what Israel has been saying for years—the purpose of Iran’s nuclear program is not peaceful,” the Prime Minister’s Office statement continued.
“This is evident from the alarming scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment activity. Such a level of enrichment exists only in countries actively pursuing nuclear weapons and has no civilian justification whatsoever,” the statement read.
The Prime Minister’s Office stressed that the IAEA’s findings clearly indicate that the Islamic Republic remains in noncompliance of its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and continues to withhold cooperation from IAEA inspectors.
“The international community must act now to stop Iran,” the PMO concluded.
The IAEA’s confidential findings, seen and reported by Reuters, were requested by the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors in November.
With the report at their disposal, the United States, Britain, France and Germany could use the board to endorse a draft resolution declaring Iran’s violation of its non-proliferation obligations as early as June 9, Reuters reported, citing unnamed diplomats.
This development could put further pressure on Tehran in its ongoing nuclear talks with Washington.
According to Reuters, the “wide-ranging” report found that Iran conducted secret nuclear activities with material not declared to the IAEA at three locations that have long been suspected for noncompliance: Lavisan-Shian, Varamin and Turquzabad.
Although some of the watchdog’s findings were related to activities going back decades, it also detailed recent Iranian activities relevant to producing nuclear weapons, the report read.
Uranium traces were unearthed at two of four sites that the U.N. agency has been investigating, with three of them holding secret experiments, the report continued.
Nuclear material and/or heavily contaminated equipment from an undeclared nuclear program was stored at the fourth site, Turquzabad, between 2009 and 2018, it said.
“These three locations, and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear program carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material,” the IAEA concluded in its report.
Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that “we have a chance of making a deal with Iran. They don’t want to be blown up. They would rather make a deal, and I think that could happen in the not-too-distant future,” reiterating his optimism that Tehran’s nuclear program could be dismantled peacefully.
“If we could have a deal without bombs being all over the Middle East, that would be a very good thing,” the president said.
“We want [Iran] to be safe. We want them to have a very, very successful nation. Let it be a great nation, but we can’t have that. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. It’s very simple,” Trump added.
Washington and Tehran held their fifth round of diplomatic talks in Rome on Friday, the delegations led respectively by U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Araghchi said on Saturday that negotiations centered on rejecting Washington’s “dominance,” Iran’s semi-government run Mehr News Agency reported.
“They have no right to deprive the Iranian nation of its rightful entitlements simply because of their concerns,” Araghchi said.
Despite claiming that Tehran was not interested in obtaining nuclear weapons, the minister added that his country will not show the slightest flexibility on the issue of Uranium enrichment, according to Mehr.
