In a live televised address on Monday evening, Netanyahu showed many clips of Iranian leaders, including the Supreme Leader and the president, denying they ever wanted to build a nuclear bomb.
“Tonight I’m here to tell you one thing – Iran lied. Big time,” he said.
Netanyahu said that Israel obtained half a ton of materials, including texts, blueprints, photos, and videos from a secret Iranian vault containing files from “Project Amad.”
“We can now prove that Project Amad was a comprehensive program to design, build and test nuclear weapons. We can also prove that Iran is secretly storing Project Amad material to use at a time of its choice to develop nuclear weapons,” he said.
Netanyahu said that Iran shelved its Project Amad in 2003, but not its nuclear ambitions – developing a new program under a plan from the top leadership to preserve the knowhow from Project Amad and form new organizations to continue activities towards development of a nuclear bomb that could be carried in a ballistic missile.
The landmark nuclear deal, the JCPOA, failed to curtail Iran’s ambitions, he said, calling it a “terrible deal.”
Netanyahu said they have already shared the information with the United States – who can vouch for its authenticity – and are prepared to share it with other nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
US President Donald Trump has a May 12 deadline to decide whether to stay committed to the nuclear deal or scrap it. He is under pressure from Europe and Russia to not walk away.
France’s Emmanuel Macron and Russia’s Vladimir Putin talked on the phone on Monday and called for the nuclear deal to be preserved, according to a statement from the Kremlin.
Trump has called the JCPOA one of the worst deals ever made.
“I’m sure he’ll do the right thing,” Netanyahu said of Trump.
The director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, Ali Vaez, tweeted that Netanyahu was speaking to an audience of one – “the man who gets his intel briefing from TV theatrics” – referring to Trump.
Vaez said the information revealed was already public knowledge.
This is all “a pretty clear attempt at recycling old info to create new hype and push [Donald Trump] to pull the plug on the #IranDeal and push Iran and the US into a military conflict to weaken and contain Iran,” he concluded.
Iran’s state TV has dismissed Netanyahu’s statements as propaganda, Reuters reported.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for political affairs Abbas Araqchi said on Monday that Iran has a contingency plan if the US quits the deal, IRNA reported.
Before Netanyahu’s live broadcast, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted an image from the Israeli leader’s 2012 speech to the UN General Assembly calling for the world to place a “clear red line on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”
Netanyahu demonstrated his point with a graphic of a bomb and claimed Iran was well on its way to enriching enough uranium to build a weapon.
Zarif tweeted about the “boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again.”
BREAKING: The boy who can't stop crying wolf is at it again. Undeterred by cartoon fiasco at UNGA. You can only fool some of the people so many times. pic.twitter.com/W7saODfZDK
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) April 30, 2018
