Israel claims documents prove Iran lied about nuclear program
— Israel’s prime minister on Monday unveiled what he said was a “half ton” of Iranian nuclear documents collected by Israeli intelligence, claiming it proved that Iranian leaders covered up a nuclear weapons program before signing a deal with world powers in 2015.
In a speech delivered in English and relying on his trademark use of visual aids, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the material showed that Iran cannot be trusted, and encouraged President Donald Trump to withdraw from the deal next month.
“Iran lied big time,” Netanyahu declared. In Washington, the president said it vindicated his past criticism of the nuclear deal.
But Netanyahu’s presentation, delivered on live TV from Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, did not appear to provide evidence that Iran has violated the 2015 deal, raising questions about whether it would sway international opinion ahead of Trump’s fateful decision.
The U.S.-led agreement offered Iran relief from crippling sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
Netanyahu furiously fought the deal while President Barack Obama was negotiating it, and he has been a leading critic since it was signed. He says it does not provide sufficient safeguards to prevent Iran from reaching nuclear weapons capability.
Netanyahu has found a welcome partner in Trump, who has called the agreement “the worst deal ever.”
Trump has signalled he will pull out of the agreement by May 12 unless it is revised, but he faces intense pressure from European allies not to do so. Netanyahu said he already has given the information to the U.S., and he plans to share it with Western allies and the international nuclear agency.
Ahead of the announcement, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, belittled Netanyahu in a tweet, saying, “the boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again.”
Iran’s deputy foreign minister and senior nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, called Netanyahu’s presentation “childish and ridiculous,” and said the purported evidence was “fake and fabricated.”
Iran has denied ever seeking nuclear weapons.
The exchange ratcheted up already heightened tensions between Israel and Iran. Israel considers Iran to be its biggest threat, citing Tehran’s hostile rhetoric, support for militants and growing influence in the region.
Israel has said it will not allow Iran to establish a permanent military presence in neighbouring Syria, where Iran supports President Bashar Assad.
Overnight Monday, a missile attack in northern Syria killed more than a dozen pro-government fighters, many of them Iranians, a war monitoring group and an Iranian news agency said.
There was no official confirmation of the death toll or the target. But Israel was widely suspected of being behind it.
In his presentation, Netanyahu said Israel had obtained some 55,000 pages of documents and 183 CDs of secret information from an Iranian nuclear weapons program called “Project Amad.”
He said the material was gathered from a facility in the Tehran neighbourhood of Shourabad a few weeks ago “in a great intelligence achievement.”
He said the uncovered filed included “incriminating” documents, charts, blueprints, photos and videos. He pointed to one presentation that allegedly called for producing and testing five warheads.
The authenticity of the documents could not be verified, and it was not clear whether they shed any new light on what international inspectors already have concluded. The documents appeared to date back to the early 2000s, when international inspectors already believe Iran was pursuing a weapons program.