{"id":16728,"date":"2018-09-29T04:24:58","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T04:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16728"},"modified":"2018-09-29T04:24:58","modified_gmt":"2018-09-29T04:24:58","slug":"irans-fm-calls-netanyahus-claims-at-un-an-obscene-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16728","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s FM calls Netanyahu\u2019s claims at UN an \u2018obscene charge\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nTEHRAN: Iran\u2019s foreign minister denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s allegations against Tehran at the UN General Assembly as an \u201cobscene charge,\u201d the state-run IRNA news agency reported Friday.
The response came after Netanyahu on Thursday claimed at the General Assembly that Iran has a \u201csecret atomic warehouse\u201d on Tehran\u2019s outskirts and challenged UN inspectors to examine it.
It was unclear whether Netanyahu\u2019s announcement sheds new light on what UN inspectors already know, or whether it was intended to prove that Iran has been violating the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that followed years of Western sanctions over the country\u2019s contested atomic program.
According to IRNA, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called Netanyahu a \u201cliar who would not stop lying.\u201d
The 2015 nuclear deal saw Iran drastically limit its enrichment of uranium \u2014 a possible pathway to atomic-grade weapons \u2014 in exchange for the lifting of crushing economic sanctions. Iran long has denied seeking nuclear weapons and claimed its program is for peaceful purposes only.
In May, President Donald Trump pulled America out of the nuclear deal, in part due to Tehran\u2019s ballistic missile program, its \u201cmalign behavior\u201d in the Mideast and its support of militant groups like Hezbollah. The Trump administration has also been re-imposing sanctions on Iran, plunging its economy further into a downward spiral.
For his part, Zarif tweeted that Israel\u2019s the only one with an \u201cundeclared\u201d nuclear weapons program in the region and that it should open it to international inspectors.
\u201cNo arts & craft show will ever obfuscate that Israel is only regime in our region with a (asterisk)secret(asterisk) and (asterisk)undeclared(asterisk) nuclear weapons program \u2014 including an (asterisk)actual atomic arsenal(asterisk). Time for Israel to fess up and open its illegal nuclear weapons program to international inspectors,\u201d Zarif said on his Twitter account.
The spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Bahram Ghasemi, said Netanyahu\u2019s accusation was \u201cnot worth talking about.\u201d
\u201cThese farcical claims and the show by the prime minister of the occupying regime (Israel) were not unexpected,\u201d Ghasemi added.
Iran\u2019s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, mocked Netanyahu, saying the Israeli leader must have been badly advised by some people.
Netanyahu is known for showmanship at the UN General Assembly. In 2012, he famously held up a cartoon of a bomb before the UN audience while discussing Iran\u2019s nuclear program.
Netanyahu made a similarly splashy accusation in May, saying Israeli agents spirited away a \u201chalf ton\u201d of documents regarding Iran\u2019s nuclear program from a facility in Tehran\u2019s Shourabad neighborhood.
Separately, Netanyahu in his speech before the General Assembly also held up an image of what he said are rocket factories run by the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group, hidden in civilian areas of Beirut.
In response, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil tweeted that Israel was \u201cfabricating pretexts\u201d to launch an attack on Lebanon \u201cfrom the podium of international legitimacy.\u201d
The Israeli military had said Hezbollah is attempting to establish missile conversion infrastructure near Beirut\u2019s Rafik Hariri International Airport.
Last week, Hezbollah\u2019s leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted how the Shiite militant group now possesses \u201chighly accurate\u201d missiles despite Israeli attempts to prevent it from acquiring such weapons. He did not elaborate on the missiles.
A Hezbollah spokesman in Beirut said Friday the group has \u201cno comment\u201d on Netanyahu\u2019s claims.
Hezbollah\u2019s outgoing Cabinet Minister Mohammed Fneish told the private Central News Agency: \u201cLet\u2019s leave Netanyahu with his lies and illusions. Let him say whatever he wants and instigate the way he wants.\u201d
\u201cWe will only say that the resistance (Hezbollah) has capabilities that\u201d Nasrallah talked about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TEHRAN: Iran\u2019s foreign minister denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s allegations against Tehran at the UN General Assembly as an \u201cobscene charge,\u201d the state-run IRNA news agency reported Friday.The response came after Netanyahu on Thursday claimed at the General Assembly that Iran has a \u201csecret atomic warehouse\u201d on Tehran\u2019s outskirts and challenged UN inspectors to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}