Iran Urges Probe Into U.S. Chemical Labs in Ukraine

Date: 14 April 2023 - 23:34

News ID: ۱۱۳۹۵۸

TEHRAN – Iran has called for an international investigation into reports of U.S.-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine and elsewhere across the world.
“The published news about U.S. military biological laboratories in Ukraine and some other countries of the world is deeply worrying. Such activities are in contradiction to the international obligations of the United States, especially the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and pose a threat to humanity,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani tweeted on Thursday.
“The matter requires an impartial international investigation,” he said.
A Russian parliamentary commission investigating Washington’s military-related biological activities at laboratories across Ukraine concluded on Wednesday that Washington is developing a “universal” genetically-altered bioweapon comparable to that of a “nuclear winter.”
The commission added in its 207-page report that the probe into the manufacturing of the highly-damaging bioweapon was based on findings made public by Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops over the past year.
“The United States aims to develop a universal genetically engineered biological weapon capable of infecting not only people but animals

as well as agricultural crops. Its use involves, among other things, the goal of inflicting large-scale and irreparable economic damage on the enemy,” the commission said.
“The covert and targeted use of such a weapon in anticipation of a positive inevitable direct military confrontation could create a significant advantage for U.S. forces over the adversary, even against those who possess other types of weapons of mass destruction,” it said.
“The possession of such highly effective biological weapons creates, in the view of the U.S. military, the real prerequisites to change the nature of contemporary armed conflicts,” it added.
Soon after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia stated that secret American labs in Ukraine had been engaged in biological warfare. The U.S. and Ukraine, however, denied the charges.
In October last year, Russia asked the UN Security Council to establish a commission to investigate its claims that Washington and Kyiv were violating the convention prohibiting the use of biological weapons as a result of alleged activities being carried out at biological laboratories in Ukraine.
Also on Thursday, Kanaani categorically dismissed a recent report by Politico magazine that China and Russia are in advanced secret talks with Iran to replenish the Islamic Republic’s supply of a key chemical compound used to propel ballistic missiles.
Kanaani told IRNA that such reports are aimed at prolongation of the Ukraine war.
He said such fabricated news reports seek to deviate the world public opinion away from the Western military supplies being sent to Ukraine, and intend to further prolong the war in the Eastern European country in pursuit of their strategic goals.