Nuclear deal ‘based on lies’
Israel accused Iran yesterday of lying to the world about its nuclear weapons programme, 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 archopponent of the nuclear deal, made the dramatic public accusation in Tel Aviv less than two weeks before Donald Trump, the US president, is due to announce whether or not he will pull out of the agreement.
The Israeli prime minister said that Israeli spies had obtained ‘‘half a ton’’ of secret documents which 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. ‘‘This is a terrible deal which should never have been concluded and in a few days’ time Trump will make his decision on what to do with the nuclear deal. I’m sure he will do the right thing. The right thing for the US, the right thing for Israel and the right thing for the peace of the world.’’
Netanyahu’s presentation, made in front of a large screen at the Israeli defence ministry, seemed designed to convince Trump to follow his instincts and pull the US out of the agreement ahead of a May 12 deadline.
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.’’ Trump refused to say what his final decision would be but said he was open to negotiating ‘‘a better deal’’. Iran and other members of the P5+1 bloc of world powers have said it is not possible to renegotiate the agreement or strike a new pact.
Netanyahu’s talk served as a counterweight to diplomatic efforts by Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who both visited the White House last week to implore Trump not to scrap the agreement.
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.
Netanyahu said 55,000 pages and 55,000 electronic documents had been secreted out of an archive in the Shorabad district of southern Tehran. He said Israeli spies had pulled off one of their ‘‘biggest-ever intelligence achievements’’ by getting the files out of Tehran but he gave no details about how they ended up in Israeli hands.
The files were from Project Amad, which Netanyahu said was a secret Iranian programme to develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s leaders have said consistently that they did not want a nuclear bomb and that their nuclear intentions were peaceful.
Project Amad was shelved in 2003 but elements secretly continued and remain functional to this day under the direction of the same Iranian scientists who conducted the original research, Netanyahu said.
Telegraph Group