Israel accuses Iran of stealing documents from UN nuclear watchdog

Israel on Tuesday accused Iran of stealing classified documents from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to help it hide evidence of its nuclear programme.

The Jewish state believes Iran is seeking to produce atomic weapons, a claim Tehran strongly denies.

“Iran stole classified documents from the UN’s Atomic Agency IAEA and used that information to systematically evade nuclear probes,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote on Twitter.

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“How do we know? Because we got our hands on Iran’s deception plan,” Bennett wrote. His tweet included a link to eight files of documents in English and Farsi, as well as photographs.

The files were part of a cache allegedly taken by Israeli agents from an Iranian warehouse in 2018.

Earlier on Tuesday, Iran condemned as “not fair” an IAEA report on traces of nuclear material found at three undeclared sites, as talks on reviving a 2015 deal remain deadlocked.

That deal with world powers, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, gave Iran relief from crippling economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear activities.

But then-US president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out in 2018 and reimposed biting sanctions, prompting Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments.

Israel is adamantly opposed to the original agreement and any effort to restore it.

In its report, the IAEA said it still had questions which were “not clarified” regarding nuclear material previously found at three sites — Marivan, Varamin and Turquzabad — which had not been declared by Iran as having hosted nuclear activities.

It said its long-running efforts to get Iranian officials to explain the presence of nuclear material had failed to provide answers to its questions.

Iran and the IAEA agreed in March on an approach for resolving the issue of the sites, one of the remaining obstacles in efforts between Iran and major powers to revive the 2015 pact.

• MENA