National Post (National Edition)
NETANYAHU’S NOT-SO SUBTLE MESSAGE
ISRAELI SPIES PROVE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL BASED ON LIES, PRIME MINISTER CLAIMS
JERUSALEM • Israel accused Iran Monday of lying to the world about its nuclear weapons program, both before and since the 2015 nuclear deal, after Israeli intelligence stole 100,000 files from a secret “atomic archive” in Tehran.
Benjamin Netanyahu, an arch-opponent of the nuclear deal, made the dramatic public accusation in Tel Aviv less than two weeks before Donald Trump, the U.S. president, is due to announce whether or not he will pull out of the agreement.
The Israeli prime minister said Israeli spies had obtained “half a tonne” of secret documents that show that Iran’s leaders had never given a full account of their past nuclear activities as required by the Iran deal and had maintained the capability to build a bomb in the future.
“The nuclear deal is based on lies. It is based on Iranian lies and Iranian deception,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s revelations were delivered with one specific aim: to persuade the Trump administration to cancel the nuclear deal with Tehran.
Washington has until May 12 to decide whether to renew its support for the deal, which was finally implemented in the summer of 2015 after Barack Obama invested an enormous amount of political capital in reaching an agreement with Iran.
The former president believed the agreement negotiated between Iran and six major powers was the best means of persuading the ayatollahs to scale down their nuclear-related activities, which most Western intelligence officials believed was aimed at developing nuclear weapons. In return the West agreed to lift many of the crippling sanctions it had imposed on Tehran.
Israel, though, remained deeply skeptical about Iran’s insistence that its nuclear activities were entirely peaceful.
Its ministers had criticized Tehran’s decision to continue its work on developing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, with the ability of making a direct strike on Israel.
There has been growing disquiet in Jerusalem, too, about the growing influence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard throughout the Middle East, particularly in neighbouring Syria, where Iran has established a network of self-sufficient military bases.
The seriousness with which the Israelis view these developments was demonstrated Sunday night when the Israeli military launched another missile attack on Iranian positions in Syria.
Netanyahu will be hoping that his latest revelations, which he insists are “new and conclusive proof ” that Iran has been concealing the true extent of its nuclear ambitions from the outside world for decades, will help to persuade Trump to ditch the deal later this month.
In his presentation, he said Israel had obtained tens of thousands of pages of documents relating to Iran’s clandestine plan to develop nuclear weapons, known as Project Amad, which had been hidden at a secret location in Tehran since the deal was signed.
Project Amad was shelved in 2003 but elements secretly continued and remain functional to this day under the direction of the same scientists who conducted the original research, Netanyahu said. He added Iran had failed to “come clean” about its past nuclear activities in 2015, after the deal was signed, when Iran was required by the agreement to tell the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, about all its previous research.
The documents are said to show that Iran has retained the ability and know-how to continue working on its nuclear weapons program.
In Washington, Trump said the Israeli presentation “really showed that I’ve been 100-per-cent right.”
“That is just not an acceptable situation,” he said. “They (Iran) are not sitting back idly, they’re setting off missiles.”
Netanyahu’s talk served as a counterweight to diplomatic efforts by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who both visited the White House last week to implore Trump not to scrap the agreement.
Netanyahu said the files had already been shared with the U.S. and that American intelligence “can vouch for its authenticity.” Israel plans to share it with other Western countries and the IAEA.
Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, mocked Netanyahu’s speech before it even began. “The boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again,” he said.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrapped up a Mideast swing by saying that a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a priority for the Trump administration.