Israel Claims Iran Has 'Secret Nuclear Warehouse'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran on Thursday of keeping a "secret atomic warehouse" just outside its capital, despite the 2015 deal with world powers that was meant to keep it from obtaining nuclear weapons. Hours later, Iran dismissed the allegation. Holding up a poster-board map of an area near Tehran as he spoke at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu told world leaders that Iranian officials have been keeping up to 300 tons of nuclear equipment and material in a walled, unremarkable-looking property near a rug-cleaning operation, the AP reports.

"You have to ask yourself a question: Why did Iran keep a secret atomic archive and a secret atomic warehouse?" Netanyahu asked. "What Iran hides, Israel will find." Netanyahu didn't specify what the material and equipment was, and it was not immediately clear whether it was a violation of the nuclear deal. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been monitoring Iran's compliance with the agreement, had no immediate comment. In a tweet, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif derided the Israeli presentation as an "arts and craft show" by a country that he said needed to come clean about its own nuclear program. He said there was nothing to the Israeli allegation.

(More Iranian nuclear program stories.)