TEHRAN: Iran accused World powers on Wednesday of trying to spy on the country with a newly built UN seismic monitoring station near its border to detect tremors from nuclear explosions.
Construction of the station was completed last week in neighboring Turkmenistan, a few miles from the Iranian border. It’s one of 337 such stations worldwide that detect seismic activity set off by weak blasts and even shock waves from nuclear experiments.
Abolfazl Zohrehvand, an adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, said the international treaty that allows for setting up such observatories is an “espionage treaty.” “With the disclosure of the identity of such stations, it is clear the activity of one of them (in Turkmenistan) is to monitor Iran,” Zohrehvand told state IRNA news agency.
Zohrehvand said the UN planned to set up more than one such station around Iran. The US and some of its allies suspect Iran’s nuclear program is a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has denied the charges, saying the program is geared toward generating electricity.
A UN commission that seeks to ban all nuclear tests announced last week on its Web site that the new nuclear warning station has been set up between Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert and the Kopet mountain range. The Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, or CTBTO, said the station has now been fully constructed and is currently undergoing testing.
Zohrehvand said the CTBTO is a “security and espionage treaty, even more dangerous” than the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s additional protocol, which allows intrusive inspections of nuclear facilities in member states.
