Israel accuses Iran of stealing documents from UN nuclear watchdog

OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: Israel on Tuesday accused its arch-foe Iran of stealing classified documents from the International Atomic Energy Agency to help it hide evidence of its nuclear programme.

The Jewish state believes Iran is seeking to produce atomic weapons, a claim Tehran strongly denies. "Iran stole classified documents from the UN’s Atomic Agency IAEA and used that information to systematically evade nuclear probes," Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote on Twitter. "How do we know? Because we got our hands on Iran’s deception plan," Bennett wrote. His tweet included a link to eight files of documents in English and Farsi, as well as photographs.

The files were part of a cache allegedly taken by Israeli agents from an Iranian warehouse in 2018. Earlier on Tuesday, Iran condemned as "not fair" an IAEA report on traces of nuclear material found at three undeclared sites, as talks on reviving a 2015 deal remain deadlocked.