The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirms the concerns that Iran is consistently striving for nuclear weapons, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Saturday evening. "The report makes it clear that Iran is continuing to enrich uranium and to carry out other activities, in contradiction of U.N. Security Council resolutions," the ministry stated.
"The report determines that Iran is involved in activities which are part of the development of nuclear weapons," the Israeli statement read. "In Israel's eyes, this conclusion and others in the report strengthen the need for a continued comprehensive and deep investigation of all of Iran's nuclear activities," it added.
"Since Iran continues to mount obstacles on the IAEA investigation," the statement said, "and continues to disregard Security Council resolutions, Israel thinks that the international community needs to step up its pressure on Iran in order to guarantee at the least that it will not be able to obtain nuclear weapons."
The IAEA report published Friday determined that Iran has conducted experiments on a new technology which makes it possible to enrich uranium very fast.
U.S: report makes our case stronger
The U.S. said meanwhile that the report actually strengthens its demand for a third wave of sanctions against Tehran. American sources noted that the IAEA report deals conspicuously with Iran's failure to be fully cooperative with the agency's people.
"The United Nations has a very strong case for passing a third Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran after the new report from the IAEA found that Tehran failed to cooperate fully with its investigators and left unanswered crucial questions about its nuclear past," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.
"This report demonstrates that whatever the Iranians may be doing to try to clean up some elements of the past, it is inadequate, given their current activities, given questions about their past activities and given what we all have to worry about, which is a future in which Iran could start to perfect the technologies that could lead to nuclear weapons," Rice said.
Tehran gloats
Tehran chose to present the IAEA report as a great victory. Senior Iranian government officials said that the report does not justify additional sanctions by the UNSC. The senior Iranians said that the report "absolves the Iranian nuclear program of the false allegations that were leveled at it.
"Settlement of the six outstanding issues in the context of the action plan means the subjects claimed by the west against Iran, including concealment, are baseless," an official IRNA news agency press release gloated in Tehran.
"Based on IAEA chief report all issues and ambiguities relating to the past activities are verified and ambiguities have been removed. This indicates there has been no concealment or diversion in past activities of Iran. El Baradei's report is a verification that Iran has been right over its nuclear activities. "