Iran’s Zarif says Netanyahu desperate to find a smokescreen

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is desperately seeking to find a pretext to create a hype about Iran’s nuclear program.

Zarif said in an excerpt of an interview set to air Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Netanyahu’s latest attempt at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he put on show pictures of an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons storage site, was meant to conceal the regime’s own nuclear arsenal.

“He’s just trying to find a smokescreen … Nonsense,” said Zarif of Netanyahu’s accusations.

The top Iranian diplomat said that Netanyahu had repeatedly been proven wrong in his claims about Iran’s nuclear program as shown by recurrent probes of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“He’s been wrong about the previous [allegations] and he’s wrong about this one,” said Zarif, adding, “The previous allegations that Netanyahu made have been investigated by the IAEA and have been rejected.”

Zarif had earlier dismissed Netanyahu’s claims about Iran’s secret nuclear sites, saying in a tweet on Thursday that the Israeli regime was the only entity in the world that had always refused to disclose facts about its nuclear weapons.

‘Israel in no position to level nuclear accusation at Iran’

Iran says the Israeli regime, a possessor of nuclear weapons, is in no position to level nuclear accusations against Tehran.

“No arts & craft show will ever obfuscate that Israel is only regime in our region with a *secret* and *undeclared* nuclear weapons program – including an *actual atomic arsenal*. Time for Israel to fess up and open its illegal nuclear weapons program to international inspectors,” said the Iranian foreign minister in a tweet on Thursday.

The IAEA has issued 12 reports on Iran’s compliance with terms of an international agreement on the country’s nuclear program which was signed in July 2015 between Tehran and six world powers.