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May 4, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
Netanyahu accused of “rehashing” old Iran claims to wreck nuclear deal
Iran was quick to describe Netanyahu’s claims as a “rehash of old allegations”.
In a televised prime-time speech from Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu claimed Israeli agents had obtained half a tonne of documents from what he called Iran’s “Atomic Archives”. But Olli Heinonen, former chief inspec- tor of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was quoted by the Guardian as saying his department first saw documentation that Netan- yahu presented as new back in 2005. The safe- guards department that Heinonen ran concluded that the evidence of Iranian nuclear weapon design work known as the Amad Project was credible, but that substantial work on the project ended in 2003. A classified briefing on Amad was given to the IAEA board in 2008.
After watching Netanyahu’s presentation, Heinon- en reportedly said: “I just saw a lot of pictures I had seen before.”
Nevertheless, the impact of Netanyahu’s ploy
to use the political theatre as part of his effort
to persuade Donald Trump to pull the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal – which shields Iran from crippling economic sanctions in return for the acceptance of measures designed to block its path to developing a nuclear weapon – was soon clear. Trump, who is due to decide on whether to keep Washington in the multilateral accord by May 12, said at the White House that Israel’s evidence proved he was “100% right” about flaws in the agreement, formally known as the Joint Compre- hensive Programme of Action (JCPOA). He added: “I’ve been saying it’s [Iran’s nuclear activities] happening. They’re not sitting back idly.”
“Crying wolf”
Netanyahu told his TV audience: “Iran lied, big time.” He added. “Iran is brazenly lying when it said it never had a nuclear weapons programme.” US officials said the documents showed that the JCPOA was not built on good faith as Tehran had not properly de- tailed its past nuclear programme work.
Moments before Netanyahu spoke, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who called the Is- raeli PM’s performance a “childish stunt”, tweeted: “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.”
Zarif’s latter tweet was an allusion to September 2012 when Netanyahu presented a cartoon graphic of a bomb to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and said: "By next spring, at most by next summer at current [uranium] enrichment rates, [Iran] will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb."
Subsequently, in 2015, leaked cables revealed that around the time Netanyahu spoke before
the UNGA an Israeli intelligence assessment had concluded that Iran did not appear ready to enrich uranium to levels required for a nuclear bomb.
John Hughes, a former deputy director for sanc- tions at the US State Department who worked on the nuclear deal, told media he had not seen anything in the Israeli PM’s presentation that would change the deal. "I think, frankly, this was a political statement meant to try to influence President Trump's decision on whether to pull out of the deal," he said.
"I think it's mostly recycled material."
Trump on April 24 labelled the nuclear deal as “insane”.
EU’s Mogherini sees no violation
Apart from the US, all the other signatories to the nuclear deal – the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China – are fully behind efforts to preserve it.