Netanyahu

Israel’s Prime Minister yesterday took to primetime TV in an effort to persuade US President Donald Trump to pull out of a nuclear deal with Iran. But many experts say he produced nothing new and that what he did produce strengthened the argument for staying in the deal.

Netanyahu 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 programme before signing the deal with world powers in 2015.

In a speech delivered in English and relying on his trademark use of visual aids, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the material showed that Iran cannot be trusted, and encouraged Trump to withdraw from the deal next month.

“Iran lied big time,” Netanyahu declared.

In Washington, Trump said it vindicated his past criticism of the nuclear deal.

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said later that the US had been aware of the documents “for a while” and that he and Netanyahu discussed them during their meeting in Tel Aviv on Monday.

Speaking with reporters while flying back to the US, Pompeo said that although the existence of Iran’s nuclear arms programme had been public knowledge for years, the documents give new detail about its scope and scale and prove Iran was lying when it claimed never to have been pursuing nuclear weapons.

“This will belie any notion that there wasn’t a programme,” Pompeo said.

He issued a statement later saying Iran also lied to the six nations with which it negotiated the nuclear agreement.

However, Rob Malley, who was on the Iran negotiating team under US President Barack Obama’s Administration, played down the allegations, saying they were “nothing new”.

“For those who have followed the Iranian nuclear file, there is nothing new in Bibi’s presentation,” he wrote on Twitter.

“All it does is vindicate need for the nuclear deal. But the Israeli Prime minister has an audience of one: Trump. And he’s unfortunately unlikely to reach the same conclusion.”

Netanyahu said during his presentation, delivered on live TV from