Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad ZarifReuters

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday rejected reports of Iran’s clean-up activity at the Parchin military site as “lies” spread by opponents of the nuclear deal with world powers.

“We said that the activities in that site are related to road construction,” Zarif said, according to The Tehran Times.

The opponents of the deal have spread these lies before and their goal is to derail the nuclear agreement, he claimed.

On Wednesday, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said satellite images showed "renewed activity at a site" inside Parchin, which the West has suspected of being used for nuclear activities.

The group said the images, taken after the nuclear deal was announced, raised "obvious concerns that Iran was conducting further sanitization efforts to defeat" verification by UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The speaker of Iran’s parliament also dismissed the report, according to The Tehran Times.

“This is an artificial dispute to distract the world. There are some movements at Parchin but trying to expand those activities to the military facility and making a fuss about it is like some fairy tale,” the speaker, Ali Larijani, said.

Iran's UN mission previously called the reports "baseless", adding that construction work at the military complex, which also includes offices and residential buildings, is "quite normal".

It said "extensive construction works have been underway to repair the road" running opposite a dam near Parchin.

"These works required the use of heavy bulldozers and other heavy construction machinery in the area," it added.

Satellite evidence in 2014 and in 2012 suggested that nuclear bomb triggering devices are being tested in Parchin. Iran has in the past refused to allow visiting IAEA inspectors to enter the site, deepening suspicions over the work being done at the complex.