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Iran lied “big time” repeatedly to the international community by denying for years that the country’s nuclear program was focused on generating nuclear power for civilian purposes, Netanyahu demonstrated.
By: TPS and World Israel News
In a 17-minute presentation at the Ministry of Defense complex in Tel Aviv Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a trove of more than 100,000 documents obtained by the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, in recent weeks from a secret warehouse in southern Tehran. In a speech aimed at the international community and delivered in English, the prime minister showed photographs of classified maps, charts, photographs, blueprints, videos and more documenting the Islamic Republic’s ongoing effort to create nuclear weapons.
Israel has known for years that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program called Project Amad, Netanyahu said. “We can now prove that PA was a comprehensive program to design, build and test nuclear weapons.”
The “incriminating” evidence, he continued, is included in half a ton of material, and the US can vouch for its authenticity. It will also be shared with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The documents are “now in a very safe place,” he said.
Netanyahu stressed that the nuclear deal did nothing to derail Iran’s drive towards integrating nuclear warheads onto ballistic missiles, including the long-range Shahab 3, and to expand the range of its nuclear-capable missiles.
Warheads Can Already Reach Moscow
“They can reach Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Moscow, but they’re working on far longer ranges,” he added.
Netanyahu also showed photographic evidence of the Fordo nuclear site, which is built into the side of a mountain some 200 kilometers south of Tehran, and he said that since the signing of the nuclear deal in 2015 with the Six Global Powers, the site has continued to operate at an expanded rate of operation.
“You don’t put centrifuges under a mountain in order to create medical isotopes. You do it to create nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu affirmed.
According to the nuclear deal, in order to keep the Fordo site operational, Iran was required by the IAEA to come clean about its nuclear program, the prime minister explained. But when the nuclear watchdog issued its final report on the matter in December, 2015, Iran lied, he said.
“This was Iran’s chance to come clean. They could have told the truth, could’ve said they’d shelved the program and destroyed the material. But Iran actually denied the existence of a coordinated program aimed at creating nuclear weapons devices,” Netanyahu said, adding that the evidence shows the opposite was true.
The intelligence heist illustrated several conclusions, the prime minister said: That Iran lied about never having had a nuclear weapons program; that even after signing the deal, Iran continued to preserve and expand files for future use; and that Iran lied again in 2015 when it didn’t come clean to IAEA.
He asked rhetorically: Why would a terrorist regime hide and meticulously catalogue its secret nuclear files if not to use them at a later date?
As the May 12 deadline approaches for Trump to decide on whether or not to abandon the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the so-called Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu said he was certain that US President Donald Trump will “do the right thing for the United States, for Israel and for the peace of the world.”
‘A Stunning Intelligence Accomplishment’
Netanyahu’s blockbuster presentation won effusive accolades from members of both the governing coalition and parliamentary opposition. Member of Knesset (MK) Yoav Kisch of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, praised the prime minister on Twitter for “exposing (Iran’s) lies and distortions, and the naiveté of the deal that (the international community) signed with it.”
“This was a stunning intelligence accomplishment,” Kisch said.
MK Itzik Shmueli, a member of the opposition Zionist Union, used even more fawning language to praise intelligence services.
“The heart bursts with pride at the daring and the ability of our brave Mossad agents” who brought home an intelligence score that is “enormous, both in terms of quantity and quality,” he tweeted.
“Even the biggest deniers in the world must now draw the obvious conclusions and demand immediate improvements to the deal that was signed between the P5+1. In particular, the end date of the deal must be revoked, the ballistic missile program must be stopped, Iran must be prevented from developing advanced centrifuges for enriching (uranium) and halt Iran’s aggressiveness in Syria and around the region,” Shmueli wrote.
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