Netanyahu Escalates Call to End Iran Nuclear Deal

Netanyahu boosted his campaign to urge world leaders to fix or nix the Iran nuclear deal.

By: AP and United with Israel Staff

Israel’s prime minister on Sunday stepped up his calls for world powers to end the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran as President Donald Trump decides whether to withdraw from the agreement by next week.

In a briefing to foreign reporters, Benjamin Netanyahu said the world would be better off without any deal than with what he called the “fatally flawed” agreement reached in 2015.

Netanyahu said Israel is sharing a trove of confiscated Iranian nuclear documents with the six world powers that signed the deal, as well as other countries, in hopes of mounting further opposition to the deal. He heads to Moscow later this week for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, where talks will focus on the Iranian nuclear program and Iran’s involvement in neighboring Syria.

“I said it from the start, it has to be either fully fixed or fully nixed,” Netanyahu said. “But if you do nothing to this deal, if you keep it as is, you will end up with Iran with a nuclear arsenal in a very short time.”

Netanyahu was a vocal opponent of the deal when it was reached during the Obama administration. The agreement lifted painful economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Netanyahu last week 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).