PM reveals new Iran nuclear site
Trump says has no problem meeting Rouhani • Gantz and Lapid: Netanyahu using national security for election campaign
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed what he said was a newly discovered Iranian nuclear weapons development site at Abadeh, south of Isfahan, during a hastily called press conference Monday afternoon.
The prime minister showed satellite photos of the site taken in June, and then – after the Iranians discovered that the site had been uncovered – pictures from July showing their attempts to cover up and destroy the site. “They destroyed the evidence, or at least tried to destroy the evidence,” he said.
Netanyahu, who spoke briefly in both Hebrew and English, said that he has a message for “the tyrants of Tehran.”
“Israel knows what you are doing. Israel knows when you are doing it. Israel knows where you are doing it,” he said. “We will continue to expose your lies. What you see is a consistent pattern of Iranian lies, deception and violations.”
The revelation comes a year after Netanyahu – during a speech at the UN – exposed what he called a “secret nuclear warehouse” in Tehran’s Turquzabad neighborhood storing materials and equipment for Iran’s nuclear program; a year and a half after that, he unveiled Iran’s secret nuclear archives that the Mossad spirited out of the country.
Netanyahu said the Abadeh site – where Iran “conducted experiments to develop nuclear weapons” – was first exposed in the nuclear archives.
The prime minister called on the international community to “wake up” and “realize that Iran is systematically lying.” He called on the international community to “join President Trump’s sanctions to exert more pressure on Iran. The only way to stop Iran’s march to the bomb and its aggression in the region is pressure, pressure and more pressure.”
Netanyahu’s announcement came a few hours after IAEA’s acting director-general, Cornel Feruta, said at a meeting of the organization’s board of governors in Vienna that “time was of the essence” for Iran to explain how uranium particles were found at the Turquzabad site, which Iran originally said was a carpet-cleaning facility.
Netanyahu said that the discovery of traces of uranium at the site, and Iran’s refusal to provide an explanation to the IAEA, is a direct violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty that Iran signed. The prime minister showed satellite
images of how the Iranians tried to cover up the site with gravel.
Iran rejected Netanyahu’s claim and said he was seeking a pretext for war.
“The possessor of real nukes cries wolf,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a tweet, a reference to Israel’s own presumed nuclear arsenal. Zarif said in a tweet: “He & #B_Team just want a war, no matter innocent blood & another $7 TRILLION.”
The Iranian foreign minister has in the past said that a so-called “B-team” including US President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman could goad the US president into a conflict with Tehran.
Meanwhile, Trump said on Monday he could meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and that he had no problem with such an encounter. Trump made the remarks to reporters at the White House.
As Netanyahu left the podium in the Foreign Ministry, with pictures of the newly revealed site on a screen behind him, Netanyahu joked – in a reference to the controversy over placing cameras at polling places – “It is important that there are cameras everywhere.”
Netanyahu’s political opponents quickly accused the prime minister of a cynical use of intelligence information to promote his election campaign.
“Netanyahu is again using intelligence information for his campaign propaganda,” Blue and White co-leader Yair Lapid said. “This is a horrifying lack of national responsibility. Iranian nukes cannot be used as campaign antics.”
Blue and White co-leader Benny Gantz said it was strange that the information was publicized hours after the cameras bill crashed.
“Netanyahu’s use of sensitive security information for [election campaign] shows poor judgment. Even in his last days as PM, Netanyahu only cares about Netanyahu,” he tweeted.
Gantz also emphasized that “nuclear Iran is a danger to regional stability. In the war against it, there is no coalition and opposition.”
Lapid pointed out that the livestream of Netanyahu’s presentation ended with a graphic of the Likud logo and voting slip.
“That’s how we should see this ‘revelation,’ which the [International Atomic Energy Agency] has known about for a long time,” he wrote. “This is election propaganda at the expense of our security.”
“Along with pride in the IDF and security forces’ operational and intelligence capabilities, the prime minister’s remarks with this timing reek of selling out and making national security subservient to political needs,” Labor MK Itzik Shmuli said.
“The Iranian threat does not need to be the backdrop for an election campaign – and in light of the threat’s severity, this was a shameful and inappropriate act,” Shmuli added.
The Democratic Union’s Ehud Barak dismissed Netanyahu’s statement eight days before the election as mere “election spin.”
Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office deflected those charges, saying that security officials recommended that Netanyahu deliver his statement immediately after Feruta’s comments in Vienna. Foreign Minister Israel Katz called on the UK, France and Germany – which, along with the US, China and Russia, negotiated the accord with Iran – to lead efforts to cancel the agreement and join American sanctions. Despite Washington’s withdrawal from the accord last year, the three European powers still abide by it and are trying to salvage it.
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action provides a mechanism for states to complain if the accord is being breached, a step that could ultimately lead to the reimposition of sanctions.
“History teaches again and again that submission to tyrants leads to violence and not peace,” Katz said. “The world must unite to stop Iran’s race for nukes
and [its] support of regional and world terrorism.”
Lahav Harkov and Reuters contributed to this report. •