Netanyahu’s Bizarre PowerPoint Presentation on Iran
Krishnadev
Calamur, The Atlantic, Apr 30, 2018
Israel’s
leader says Iran cheated on the nuclear deal, adding doubts about the
agreement’s survival. But he mostly described past programs.
 |
|
Amir
Cohen / Reuters
|
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel had uncovered
documents showing that Iranian officials had lied when they said the country
had never pursued nuclear weapons, adding that the Islamic Republic had a
detailed plan to develop nuclear weapons—and had hidden the relevant documents
away in an archive in Tehran.
“I’m here
to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time,” Netanyahu said in a presentation
that included details from what he said were the Iranian documents.
He said
Iran had moved its atomic archives to a secret location in Tehran’s Shorabad
district, and that Israel had obtained half a ton of material from inside these
vaults a few weeks ago, including 55,000 pages, and 55,000 files on 183 CDs.
“We’ve
shared this material with the United States, and the United States can vouch
for its authenticity,” he said, continuing that Israel was willing to share the
material with other countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which
monitors Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement.
He said
documents pertaining to Iran’s nuclear program, Project Amad, were secretly
being stored by Tehran until a later time when it could develop nuclear
weapons. The goal of that program, he said, was to design, produce, and test
five nuclear warheads with a yield of 10 kilotons. The IAEA has known about
Project Amad well before the signing of the nuclear agreement in the Iran
nuclear deal, in 2015, and published material on it in 2011.
Israeli
media reported that Meir
Ben-Shabbat, the country’s national-security adviser, spoke with his
counterparts from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany on Israel’s new intelligence.
The three countries, along with Russia, China, the U.S., and the European
Union, were party to the nuclear agreement with Iran.
What
Netanyahu was hoping to achieve with his presentation is not clear. His
skepticism about Iran’s intentions and its commitment to the nuclear agreement
is well known. Those hoping for a smoking gun of Iran’s cheating on the deal,
in which it agreed to curb its nuclear program, were likely to be disappointed.
The fact that Iran was at one point pursuing nuclear weapons will likely be a
surprise to no one—and indeed was a rationale for concluding the nuclear
agreement in the first place. Many of the slides Netanyahu showed pertained to
the period from 1999 to 2003, during which the U.S. also cited evidence of an
Iranian nuclear-weapons program, and after which a U.S. National Intelligence
Estimate said the program had been shut down. His main evidence that Iran had
cheated on the nuclear deal was that it had not fully disclosed the details of
its past nuclear programs to the IAEA, as required by the nuclear deal—though
the agreement did not tie that requirement to either implementation of the deal
or sanctions relief.
Still,
Netanyahu’s announcement could have dramatic consequences not only for the
future of the nuclear deal, which is known officially as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but also in stoking the already high
tensions between Israel and Iran. Netanyahu made his comments hours after an
unnamed military force conducted a strike on Iranian targets in Syria.
Suspicion immediately fell on Israel, which has carried out dozens of similar
strikes, and which neither confirms nor denies its activities inside Syria.
As to the
Obama-era nuclear agreement itself, Donald Trump has called it “the worst deal
in history.” His advisers, as well as his European allies, have hoped to
persuade him to remain in the JCPOA, arguing that it is achieving what it is
intended to do—prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But French President
Emmanuel Macron told French media last week, after his visit to Washington,
D.C., that he believed Trump “will get rid of this deal on his own, for
domestic reasons.” Trump has until May 12 to decide. Netanyahu’s speech could
help give him a rationale to withdraw—or, should he want to save the deal, give
him wiggle room to reimpose nuclear sanctions without fully withdrawing.
European
leaders have lobbied to preserve the JCPOA. They maintain that the agreement
did not set out to curtail the Islamic Republic’s nonnuclear actions in the
region—its ballistic-missile tests, involvement in the Syrian civil war and in
Iraqi politics, role in the conflict in Yemen, and continued support for Shia
proxies. These are all factors that opponents of the deal cite while pointing
to the JCPOA’s weaknesses, and ones that Netanyahu did not cite in his speech.
But the
biggest complaints cover the pact’s “sunset” provisions, which Netanyahu also
alluded to, and under which certain restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program
expire in eight, 10, and 15 years. The deal’s opponents say these provisions
allow the Islamic Republic to freely resume a nuclear-weapons program after
those periods end, and that the deal merely delays
the time it would take for Iran to have nuclear weapons. On Monday, Netanyahu
argued that Iran’s intent in preserving its atomic archive was to resume the
program eventually. But the agreement’s supporters call the
sunset-clause criticism a willful misreading of the JCPOA. They say
that the deal places other permanent restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.
Netanyahu
is a long-standing critic of the pact, though Israeli national-security experts
have previously
said that the JCPOA is accomplishing its goals. (Efraim Halevy, the
former head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, said over the
weekend that the JCPOA had “positive elements in it.”) The Israeli
leader says he views Iran as an existential threat. The rhetoric of the Islamic
Republic’s clerical leadership, as well as Tehran’s financial and military
support for Hezbollah, which fought Israel for decades in Lebanon, and Hamas,
the Palestinian militant organization that governs the Gaza Strip, shows the
basis for Netanyahu’s fears. Iran’s growing influence in Syria, where it
supports the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, is an added factor, as it
gives Iran’s proxies a land border with Israel.
And the
Israeli–Iranian confrontation goes beyond diplomacy. Fearful that Iran is
seeking a permanent military presence inside Syria, Israel has struck several
times inside the country—most recently, apparently, Sunday night, after which
at least 22 people were reported to have been killed. There has been no claim
of responsibility for that strike, though that was not the case earlier this
month when Israel struck
a military base inside Syria, the T4 base, where Iran is known to
operate, reportedly killing 14 people. Israel says
Iran uses the base to transfer weapons to Hezbollah. Israel also struck
the base in February after an Iranian drone launched from the base
entered Israeli territory. Tehran has so far done little to retaliate.
The
latest attack inside Syria, and Netanyahu’s speech, came after multiple
high-level contacts between the U.S. and Israel.
U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is still in the Middle East, met with
Israeli officials on Sunday and said the U.S. was “deeply concerned about
Iran’s dangerous escalation of threats to Israel and the region and Iran’s
ambition to dominate the Middle East remains.” Netanyahu also spoke Sunday with
Trump to discuss “the Iranian regime’s destabilizing activities,” the White
House said. Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman met
with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis in Washington, hours after Mattis told
lawmakers that the prospect of a conflict between Iran and Israel was “very likely.”
Additionally, General Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command, which
oversees U.S. military interests across the Middle East, visited Israel
last week and met with his senior Israeli counterparts.
“All this
is beginning to look rather like a coordinated Israeli–American operation to
limit Iran’s military activities in Syria—simultaneously conveying the message
to Moscow that Russia’s green light for Iran to establish itself militarily in
Syria is not acceptable in Jerusalem and Washington,” Avi Issacharoff, The
Times of Israel’s Middle East analyst, wrote.
Haaretz’s Noa Landau reported
that Netanyahu had informed Trump and Pompeo about the information he unveiled
Monday.
In any
case, Trump has a decision about the nuclear deal coming up. America’s major
allies in Europe and Israel have made their preferences clear, from opposite
sides of the debate. The agreement’s fate now rests with Trump. “I’m sure he’ll
do the right thing,” Netanyahu said of the U.S. president. “The right
thing for the United States. The right thing for Israel. And the right thing
for the peace of the world.”
