The spokesperson of Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Friday blasted Israel after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called for an international response to a damning International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran.
“Outlaw Israeli regime—sitting on illicit nukes & refusing to join NPT—again threatens NPT member Iran; a nation w world's most inspected nuclear program,” tweeted the spokesperson, Saeed Khatibzadeh.
“The West's darling is a habitual extorter. But world has woken up to its destabilizing nature. Iran reserves right to respond,” he added.
Bennett earlier said that "Israel takes the situation reflected in the report very seriously and will do everything in its power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
"I call for an appropriate and swift international response," the Prime Minister stated.
The IAEA report, which was published earlier this week, criticized Iran for stonewalling an investigation into its past nuclear activities and jeopardizing important monitoring work.
The report said, according to the Reuters news agency, that there had been no progress on two central issues: explaining uranium traces found at several old, undeclared sites and getting urgent access to some monitoring equipment so that the agency can continue to keep track of parts of Iran's nuclear program.
"The Agency's confidence that it can maintain continuity of knowledge is declining over time and has now significantly further declined," it said, adding that while the agency needs to access the equipment every three months, it had not had access since May 25.
"This confidence will continue to decline unless the situation is immediately rectified by Iran," it added.
Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal in response to former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018, though it has been holding indirect talks with the US on a return to the agreement.
The negotiations were adjourned on June 20, two days after Ebrahim Raisi won Iran's presidential election, and no date has been set for a resumption of dialogue.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)