Iran rejects IAEA nuclear report as ‘politically motivated’

A report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog that accused Iran of doubling the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges it has in an underground bunker was politically motivated, an Iranian lawmaker said on Friday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Thursday indicated that despite threat of an Israeli or U.S. military strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the Islamic Republic was rapidly increasing the enrichment capacity of its Fordow site, buried deep underground to withstand any such hit.

“Publishing this report while Iran is holding the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting does not mean anything other than it was a political move aimed at overshadowing the meeting in Tehran,” lawmaker Kazem Jalali told the ISNA news agency.

Major powers accuse Iran of trying to build bombs under cover of a civilian nuclear program. Tehran denies this, saying it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

“It seems that this report is a scenario for psychological warfare because Iran was able to show its authority and international position at the NAM summit,” said Jalali, a member of parliament's national security and foreign affairs committee.

Iran has portrayed its hosting of the summit of the 120-nation group of developing nations as proof that Western efforts to isolate it for its disputed nuclear program have failed.

The IAEA’s quarterly report on Iran said buildings had been demolished and earth removed at a military site the agency wants to inspect, in what Western diplomats see as an effort by Tehran to remove any evidence of illicit nuclear-linked tests.

Based on the report, the number of centrifuges at Fordow, near the holy Shiite Muslim city of Qom, about 130 km (80 miles) from Tehran, had more than doubled to 2,140 from 1,064 in May. The new machines were not yet operating, it said.

During his speech at the NAM summit on Thursday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran's nuclear program was entirely peaceful. “Our motto is nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none,” he said.

But the expansion in enrichment infrastructure and the stockpiles of nuclear material revealed in the IAEA’s report will do nothing to ease international concerns or reduce the diplomatic and sanctions pressure on Iran.

Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, conduit for more than a third of the world's sea-borne oil trade, in response to increasingly harsh sanctions by the United States and its allies intended to force it to curb its nuclear work.

U.N. chief criticizes Iran on human rights

Meanwhile, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has called on Iran to free all its political prisoners, in a speech obtained by AFP on Friday and delivered in Tehran on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit.

“I have urged the authorities during my visit this time to release opposition leaders, human rights defenders, journalists and social activists to create the conditions for free expression and open debate,” Ban said, according to the text of the address delivered late Thursday to an Iranian diplomats’ college.

Ban said that allowing the Iranian people’s voice to be heard was especially important ahead of the country’s 2013 presidential election, when a successor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be chosen.

“Restricting freedom of expression and suppressing social activism will only set back development and plant the seeds of instability,” Ban warned.

The last presidential election in Iran in 2009, which saw Ahmadinejad declared the winner amid allegations by his challengers of fraud, was followed by widespread protests that were brutally crushed by authorities.

The figureheads of the opposition “Green Movement” have languished under house arrest ever since.

Iranian officials gave no immediate reaction to Ban’s speech.

A brief state television report on the address referred only to the very last part of Ban’s speech, in which he thanked Iran for giving him a Persian carpet as a gift.