In 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech to the United Nations that Iran was close to having a fully operational nuclear weapons program.
Netanyahu told the UN,
“By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they 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.”
But as Al Jazeera reported yesterday, less than a month after his speech, “Israel’s intelligence service believed that Iran was ‘not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.’”
“A secret cable obtained by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit reveals that Mossad sent a top-secret cable to South Africa on October 22, 2012, that laid out a ‘bottom line’ assessment of Iran’s nuclear work.
It appears to contradict the picture painted by Netanyahu of Tehran racing towards acquisition of a nuclear bomb.
Writing that Iran had not begun the work needed to build any kind of nuclear weapon, the Mossad cable said the Islamic Republic’s scientists are ‘working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate such as enrichment reactors.’”
A US National Intelligence estimate from the same year found “no evidence” that Iran had decided to move towards building nuclear weapons.
Basically Netanyahu lied to the UN about Iran, a move that former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said could put Israel on a path to war with Iran, according to Al Jazeera. Dagan said attacking Iran before other options were considered was a “stupid idea.”
“An attack on Iran before you are exploring all other approaches is not the right way.”
Al Jazeera’s report comes just weeks before Netanyahu is to speak before Congress, a deal that House Speaker John Boehner made behind the White House’s back. The revelation that Netanyahu has previously lied about the true nature of Iran’s nuclear program on an international stage isn’t likely to appease the members of Congress upset about Boehner’s shady decision.
