No ‘smoking gun’ in Netanyahu files, experts say
TEL AVIV/WASHINGTON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday unveiled what he said was evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme that could step up pressure on the United States to pull out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the information showed Iran’s leaders lied to their people about a nuclear weapons programme known as ‘‘Project Amad’’. But Pompeo declined to say whether the documents provided evidence of a violation of the nuclear deal.
Intelligence experts and diplomats said Netanyahu’s presentation, on primetime television, did not seem to have a ‘‘smoking gun’’ showing a violation by Iran but it could strengthen the hand of advisers to US president Donald Trump who want to scrap the nuclear agreement.
Most of the purported evidence Netanyahu presented dated to the period before the 2015 accord was signed, although he said Iran had also kept important files on nuclear technology since then, and continued adding to its ‘‘nuclear weapons knowledge’’.
Teheran dismissed Netanyahu as ‘‘the boy who cried wolf‘‘, and called his presentation propaganda.
As he traveled back from Amman, Jordan, to Washington on Monday, Pompeo told reporters he and Netanyahu dis cussed the documents in Tel Aviv during a meeting on Sunday.
Pompeo said that while the existence of the Amad nuclear project was known for some time, the new material discovered by the Israelis will help better understand the scope and scale of the programme.
He added that the documents make ‘‘very clear that at the very least the Iranians have continued to lie to their own people. Asked whether the information indicated a violation of the Iran nuclear agreement, Pompeo responded: ‘‘I’ll leave that to lawyers. The president will ultimately have to make a determination about that, too.’’ — Reuters