VIENNA – Iran is not looking to enrich uranium to the levels needed to build an atomic bomb, Tehran’s envoy to the United Nations’ atomic agency told AFP on Thursday.
Reza Najafi, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, also said that US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic republic’s Bushehr nuclear power plant constitute a “war crime” under international law.
Israel and the United States have long accused Iran of having ambitions to build a nuclear weapon, with US President Donald Trump claiming that threat as justification for both the 12-day conflict last year and the ongoing war sparked by US-Israeli strikes on February 28.
But Najafi argued that that justification, which alleged that Tehran was looking to enrich uranium to the purity needed to build an atomic weapon, was a “lie.”
In an interview with AFP, Najafi denied that Tehran had “restarted enrichment” of radioactive uranium following the US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities in June 2025.
“We didn’t start the claim that Iran would like to restart the enrichment, we didn’t restart enrichment, and it was a lie, a very big lie, like the other lies,” the Iranian envoy said in an interview with AFP.
The diplomat also insisted that targeting Tehran’s nuclear energy infrastructure would break international law, warning that a radioactive leak would contaminate the water supply and force civilians to evacuate.
The Bushehr plant was hit late on Friday for the third time in 10 days, according to the IAEA, which reported no radiation leak or damage to the reactor.
“Any attack on the nuclear power plant in Bushehr would be in clear violation of international law, international humanitarian law,” Najafi said.
“Even during the war, it is prohibited to attack the facilities for use of the civilians, and such an attack would be a very big crime, a crime against humanity, a war crime.”
First connected to the grid in 2011, the Bushehr plant in southwestern Iran has the country’s only operational nuclear power reactor, according to the IAEA.
The UN atomic watchdog has urged all parties in the Middle East war to exercise restraint around nuclear sites.
