Netanyahu: Tehran Working Toward 'Arsenal Of Nuclear Bombs'

Netanyahu: Tehran working toward 'arsenal of nuclear bombs'

Iran is actively trying to obtain an “arsenal of nuclear bombs,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, amid ongoing tensions between the Islamic Republic and the US after the unraveling of the 2015 landmark nuclear deal.

“It’s very clear Iran is lying. Iran is continuing to work toward an arsenal of nuclear bombs, and we’re committed to stop it,” he said during a meeting with Olli Heinonen, an former deputy director-general at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Heinonen, in a series of interviews and lectures this week, repeatedly accused Iran of violating its commitments under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The Islamic Republic would be theoretically be able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon within six to eight months, he said, though building an actual bomb would take longer.

“Thank you for your forthright analysis and your clear-cut conclusion. I thank you for pointing out what Iran is doing,” Netanyahu told the Finnish-born scientist at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

Heinonen, who today serves as senior adviser on science and nonproliferation at the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, thanked Netanyahu for revealing information about Iran’s secret nuclear archive last year.

“Thank you for this brave action of taking them out [the nuclear archive documents] because this gives the material for the international community to think about it and it’s a good place on how to talk with the Iranians, how to stop it,” he said.

Last year, Mossad agents smuggled out some 100,000 documents on 55,000 pages on 183 CDs from an unmarked Tehran warehouse. According to Israeli officials, the documents proved that the Islamic Republic had actively worked on building a nuclear weapon, something Tehran has always denied and continues to deny.

According to Heinonen, a former IAEA’s deputy director-general for safeguards, only a fifth of the archival material was brought to Israel. “There is another 80 percent that stayed behind,” he said earlier Thursday at a lecture at a Jerusalem think tank.

Heinonen also said Tehran’s nuclear scientists — which he described as “the best of the best” — today could produce enough fissile material for an atomic bomb within six to eight months, though it was unclear how long it would take them to actually build such a device.