Iran’s envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog criticizes the agency for including foreign allegations in its recent report on Iran’s nuclear activities

Iran's envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog criticizes the agency for including foreign allegations in its recent report on Iran's nuclear activities.

“This is the first time that allegations against a country are announced in the report,” Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh said on Wednesday, Fars News Agency reported.

“This is in contradiction to the spirit of the agency's letters of association and obligations,” Soltaniyeh stated, adding that 15 pages of the 25-page report on Iran focuses on such allegations.

The remarks came in response to IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano's latest report which was distributed to the 35 members of the Board of Governors of the agency on Tuesday evening, a week before the board's seasonal meeting scheduled for November 17-18 in Vienna.

Iran vehemently dismissed the report as "unbalanced, unprofessional and prepared with political motivation and under political pressure, mostly by the United States."

An extraordinary session of the Non-Alignment Movement on Tuesday also decided to the IAEA report, he added.

Soltaniyeh said the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Fereydoon Abbasi had, last week, sent a letter to the IAEA, indicting Tehran's “willingness to resolve misunderstandings” between the two sides.

Soltaniyeh called the report as a “historic mistake,” that disturbed the constructive environment Iran had created by letting IAEA officials and inspectors visit Iranian nuclear sites and facilities.

“The first question is that 'Has the IAEA detected even one gram of uranium being diverted for military purposes?'” he questioned.

The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program.

Yet, as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, Iran has every right to develop and acquire nuclear technology meant for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence indicating that Iran's civilian nuclear program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.