Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Iran destroyed a facility this year where it had conducted secret nuclear weapons experiments.
In a televised address in Jerusalem, Mr Netanyahu showed satellite images of the alleged facility in central Iran, south of the city of Isfahan, from late June and late July that he said demonstrated that Iran destroyed the site. He said Iran learned that Israel had discovered it.
“They just wiped it out,” Mr Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
Mr Netanyahu gave no details about the nuclear work and didn’t say when Iran allegedly conducted nuclear weapons experiments at the facility.
He said the intelligence was gathered from documents discovered in an Israeli raid of a Tehran warehouse last year. The raid mostly turned up evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons research in 2003 and earlier and Iran’s plans for future activities.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif didn’t specifically deny Mr Netanyahu’s allegations but accused him of being a warmonger. Tehran has always denied pursuing nuclear weapons.
Mr Netanyahu’s accusations came in the heat of a tough re-election fight that climaxes next Tuesday. His allegation appeared designed to dissuade US President Donald Trump from pursuing talks with Iran counterpart Hassan Rouhani, possibly at the UN General Assembly this month. Israeli officials say that sanctions have had enough time to force Iran to make real concessions in talks with Mr Trump.
Read the article by Felicia Schwartz and Laurence Norman in The Australian (from The Wall Street Journal).