Israel’s prime minister scheduled a special prime-time statement Monday to reveal what his office said would be a \u00ab\u00a0significant development\u00a0\u00bb in the Iranian<\/b>
\nIsrael’s prime minister on Monday unveiled what he said was a \u00ab\u00a0half ton\u00a0\u00bb 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.
\u00ab\u00a0Iran lied big time,\u00a0\u00bb Netanyahu declared.
In Washington, Trump 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 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 \u00ab\u00a0the worst deal ever.\u00a0\u00bb
Trump has signaled 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: \u00ab\u00a0The boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again.\u00a0\u00bb
He later tweeted: \u00ab\u00a0Pres. Trump is jumping on a rehash of old allegations already dealt with by the
IAEA
to ‘nix’ the deal. How convenient. Coordinated timing of alleged intelligence revelations by the boy who cries wolf just days before May 12. But Trump’s impetuousness to celebrate blew the cover.\u00a0\u00bb
Iran’s deputy foreign minister and senior nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, called Netanyahu’s presentation \u00ab\u00a0childish and ridiculous\u00a0\u00bb and said the purported evidence was \u00ab\u00a0fake and fabricated.\u00a0\u00bb
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 neighboring 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 the attack.
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 \u00ab\u00a0Project Amad.\u00a0\u00bb He said the material was gathered from a facility in the Tehran neighborhood of Shourabad a few weeks ago \u00ab\u00a0in a great intelligence achievement.\u00a0\u00bb
He said the uncovered filed included \u00ab\u00a0incriminating\u00a0\u00bb 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.
A 2015 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, for example, concluded that Iran \u00ab\u00a0conducted computer modeling of a nuclear explosive device\u00a0\u00bb before 2005 and between 2005 and 2009. It said, however, that those calculations were \u00ab\u00a0incomplete and fragmented.\u00a0\u00bb
Netanyahu provided no direct evidence that Iran has violated the 2015 deal. But he said the existence of the documents proves Iran is waiting to resume its race to build a bomb.
\u00ab\u00a0We can now prove that Project Amad was a comprehensive program to design, build and test nuclear weapons,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0We can also prove that Iran is secretly storing Project Amad material to use at a time of its choice to develop nuclear weapons.\u00a0\u00bb
He said that after the project was disbanded in 2003, its director, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, continued his work under another agency called Sapan.
Netanyahu said the material proves the international nuclear deal is a failure. He said it allows Iran to continue enriching some uranium, and does not address its research efforts or development of long-range ballistic missiles.
He noted that Trump was weighing whether to pull the U. S. out of the nuclear deal, saying \u00ab\u00a0I am sure he will do the right thing.\u00a0\u00bb
At the White House, Trump praised Netanyahu’s presentation and said it vindicated the president’s past statements about Iran and the shortcomings of the nuclear deal, adding that recent events have \u00ab\u00a0really shown that I’ve been 100 percent right.\u00a0\u00bb Although Trump was hosting Nigeria’s president for a visit during Netanyahu’s speech Monday, he said he watched part of it on television.
\u00ab\u00a0That is just not an acceptable situation,\u00a0\u00bb Trump said. He declined to say whether he’ll pull out of the deal on May 12 but said that even if he does, \u00ab\u00a0that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t then negotiate a real agreement.\u00a0\u00bb
Trump has set a May 12 deadline to decide whether to pull out of the Iran deal \u2014 something he appears likely to do despite heavy pressure to stay in from European allies and other parties.
Both Trump and Netanyahu say the deal should address Iranian support for militants across the region and Iran’s development of long-range ballistic missiles, as well as eliminate provisions that expire over the next decade.
Netanyahu’s office later issued a statement saying the prime minister had spoken with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel
and French President Emmanuel Macron, and agreed to share the intelligence with them. He also spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the findings.
The
European Union
‘s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, issued a statement saying Netanyahu’s presentation will be assessed.
\u00ab\u00a0I have not seen from Prime Minister Netanyahu arguments for the moment on non-compliance, meaning violation by Iran of its nuclear commitments under the (nuclear) deal,\u00a0\u00bb she said.
___
Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, and Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n

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