TEHRAN, Iran – Iran said yesterday that environmental samples taken from a military complex this weekend by U.N. nuclear inspectors will prove that the country’s atomic program is for peaceful purposes and not making weapons, as America alleges.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency took samples from landscaped areas of the huge Parchin complex, which Washington believes may be involved in nuclear weapons research.

“We know what the result will be. Since we have never done any illegal activity, definitely the result will prove our declarations,” Mr. Asefi told reporters.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog had been pressing Tehran for months to be allowed to inspect the Tehran-area complex, long used to research ammunition, missiles, and high explosives.

America has alleged that the Iranians may be testing high-explosive components for a nuclear weapon, using an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as a dry run for how a bomb with fissile material would work.

President Bush’s communications director, Dan Bartlett, told CNN’s “Late Edition” that the White House wanted to resolve Iran’s nuclear file through negotiation, primarily by relying on European allies and the IAEA. But he added that Mr. Bush has not ruled out resolving the issue militarily.

Mr. Bush has accused Iran of being part of an “axis of evil” with North Korea and prewar Iraq.