Sunrise host Natt Barr clashes with Iranian ambassador on live TV
Iran's man in Australia has sheepishly played down reports that the nation's nuclear program largely survived surprise US bunker-buster strikes over the weekend.
Iranian ambassador to Australia Ahmad Sadeghi spent much of a Sunrise interview this morning defending the nation's right to 'peaceful nuclear usage' and to respond to 'illegal' attacks from Israel and the US in recent days.
In a brief but prickly exchange, Sunrise host Nat Barr accused Iran of breaching international obligations regarding nuclear development before demanding to know if reports out of Washington, stating the program remains intact, are correct.
'I think you had just breached your agreement under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty right before this, but let's ask you, what did the US destroy when they bombed Iran several days ago?' Barr asked.
Addressing Barr's lead statement, Mr Sadeghi asserted, 'We didn't breach our commitments – I don't know what reference you are doing'.
The UN nuclear energy watchdog ruled days before fighting in the region began that, indeed, Iran was in breach of its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations by failing to reveal information about undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple sites.
For its part, Tehran has been highly critical of the International Atomic Energy Agency's assessments before and after this month's 12-day war with Israel.
Addressing the damage from the US strikes, Mr Sadeghi said: 'I do not have any exact technical assessment and estimate (on the damage)'.
'That is something that the technical teams, with regard to Iran, and the IAEA, maybe, later on, have to find out about, the dimension of the damage.
Of course, a leaked report from US military intelligence overnight purportedly found that US President Donald Trump's weekend air strikes on Iran left most of its nuclear infrastructure intact, and its capacity to develop nuclear weapons was 'likely only set back by months'.
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