Japan announced Tuesday that it has frozen the assets of Iranians alleged to be involved in the country's nuclear program, in line with UN sanctions. A foreign ministry statement said Japan has frozen the assets of 12 entities and 13 individuals accused of links to “Iran's sensitive nuclear activities and proliferation.” Japan has already blacklisted another 23 Iranian organizations and 27 individuals over the country's nuclear drive. Japan, the only nation to have suffered atomic attack, has grown increasingly critical of Iran's nuclear drive. In 2006, Tokyo pulled out of a project to develop Iran's largest onshore oilfield at Azadegan. The latest Japanese move came as a senior official of the UN nuclear watchdog visited Tehran to discuss evidence suggesting that Iran could have been studying how to use its nuclear technology to make a warheads. Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) deputy director general, went into talks with Iranian officials Tuesday after a first round on Monday. No information has filtered out on the contents of the discussions so far and not even photographs or video footage of the meetings have been released. The Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel. __
