Iran criticizes US deployment of low-yield nuclear missiles

Iran criticized a U.S. move to deploy low-yield nuclear missiles on submarines, saying at a disarmament conference on Tuesday it made nuclear war "more likely". The U.S. Defense Department said earlier this month the Navy had fielded a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, something the Pentagon says is needed to deter adversaries like Russia. Moscow has already expressed alarm at the decision.

"Such provocative actions must be condemned," Mohsen Baharvand, Iran's deputy foreign minister for international and legal affairs, told the Conference on Disarmament in the U.N. building in Geneva. "A new nuclear arms race is being accelerated," he added.

The U.S. accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear arms, an accusation Tehran denies. Iran says the goal of nuclear programme is to generate energy. The nuclear dispute is at the heart of tensions between the two countries. Low-yield nuclear weapons, while still devastating, have a strength of less than 20 kilotons, which is about the same as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.