May 03, 2018
Netanyahu’s ‘Iran Lied’ Presentation Shows Why Trump Should Keep the Nuke Deal
Israel and the United States are both led by men who are hard to trust.
With great fanfare, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed to the world on Monday a trove of documents obtained by Israel about the history of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He used a presentation at the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv to make the case to the public and to U.S. President Donald Trump for walking away from the Iran nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But what Netanyahu unintentionally did was demonstrate why the JCPOA is so important and can be an effective tool for preventing Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
Netanyahu’s bottom line was that going back years, Iran lied about its nuclear program and secretly pursued weaponization research that would allow it to convert its supposedly peaceful civil nuclear program into a weapons program. But that was already well known. Iran built secret nuclear enrichment facilities in Natanz and Fordow that were outed to the world by Western intelligence agencies. And the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had evidence that Iran had been researching how to convert the fissile material from these enrichment facilities into a nuclear bomb.
Read the Full Article at Foreign Policy
More from CNAS
-
Washington Needs a New Syria Policy Right Now
It is well past time for Washington to demonstrate leadership, advance its global and regional interests, and support the freedom and future of the Syrian people....
By Jonathan Lord
-
“The Ayatollah Has No Clothes” – with Rich Goldberg and Richard Fontaine
Richard Fontaine is CEO of the Center for American Security, joins Call Me Back to assess the threat FROM Iran and the threat TO Iran. Listen to the full episode on Call Me ...
By Richard Fontaine
-
What Does Yahya Sinwar’s Death Mean for the War in Gaza?
Jonathan Lord, Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security program, joins RN Drive to discuss the death of Sinwar who has long been viewed as one of the militant gr...
By Jonathan Lord
-
Russia in the Middle East with Jonathan Lord and Hanna Notte
One year after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, the crisis in the Middle East has grown more and more complex. With the region teetering on the brink of broader conflict, the B...
By Jonathan Lord, Hanna Notte, Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend