Netanyahu orders Mossad to expose Iranian breaches of interim deal
Prime minister orders intelligence services to find ‘smoking gun’ proving Iran’s duplicity, Sunday Times reports, in bid to undermine Obama strategy
December 1, 2013, 6:33 am
A satellite image of Iran's Fordo uranium enrichment facility (photo credit: AP/DigitalGlobe)
Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the heads of Israel’s intelligence
community to look for proof that Iran is violating an interim deal
signed with the international community last week over its nuclear
program, a British newspaper reported on Sunday. The Israeli spying
effort to expose Iranian duplicity represents a direct challenge to US
President Barack Obama’s efforts, it said.
Mossad,
as well as the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, have been told
to dig up evidence of Iranian duplicity ahead of Obama’s push to win
support for the deal in Congress and thus head off legislators’ demands
for further sanctions against Iran, the Sunday Times reported, citing
Israeli defense sources.
“Everyone has his own view regarding
the Geneva agreement,” an Israeli intelligence source was quoted as
saying. “But it is clear that if a smoking gun is produced, it will
tumble like a house of cards.”
If Israel does produce evidence that
Iran is flouting its deal with the world powers, the agreement could
prove a tough sell for Obama in Congress.
The Israeli search for evidence of
Iranian subterfuge will focus on three aspects of the Islamic Republic’s
nuclear program — secret enrichment sites such as Fordo, which the
Iranians hid under a mountain in the holy city of Qom; ballistic missile
production; and attempts to design and construct a bomb — the Sunday
Times report said, citing unnamed Israeli defense sources.
“If Israel gets its way, what Netanyahu described as a ‘historic mistake’ will soon be exposed as a sham, the report said.
President
Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a meeting in
the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, September 30,
2013. (Photo credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO/Flash90)
Representatives of Iran and the P5+1
nations are to meet in Geneva this week to discuss unresolved aspects
of the agreement, which was sealed early last Sunday in the Swiss city
after a weekend of intensive negotiations.
A solid majority of Americans supports the deal, according to a recent Reuters poll.
Israeli officials at the weekend denounced Obama for presiding
over the negotiations, which they said granted the Islamic Republic the
right to enrich uranium and was rapidly eroding the sanctions regime
against Tehran.
That elaborate wall of sanctions,
painstakingly constructed over years, is already crumbling and “will
collapse within months,” the unnamed officials were quoted as saying by
Israel’s Channel 2.
Publicly, Netanyahu has slammed the
Geneva deal as a “historic mistake,” said Israel is not bound by it, and
vowed to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons drive alone if necessary.
In a phone conversation with Obama
last Sunday, Netanyahu agreed to send a team led by his national
security adviser to Washington to try to impact world powers’ upcoming
efforts to reach a permanent accord to thwart Iran’s alleged nuclear
weapons drive.
Privately, the unnamed officials
were quoted as indicating, Jerusalem is feeling a bitter, dismayed and
helpless sense of “we told you so.”
Claiming that officials and
businesspeople from around the world — notably including China, Turkey,
France, Russia and India — are already converging on Iran, ready to
resume large-scale oil, banking and all manner of other business
dealings as sanctions are eased in the wake the Geneva deal, the
officials reportedly said that Israel knew the sanctions pressure would
collapse, “but even we didn’t imagine it would happen this fast.”
President
Barack Obama talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while walking
from the Oval Office to the South Lawn Drive of the White House, after
their meeting May 20, 2011 in Washington, DC (photo credit: Avi
Ohayon/Government Press Office/Flash90)
The State Department has acknowledged that
Iran is currently enjoying a “window” of time before the six-month
interim deal takes effect, during which it is not bound to take any
credible steps toward disabling its ability to produce a nuclear weapon.
The terms of the deal, which are still being worked out, will only kick
in come January.
According to a source in the Obama administration quoted by The New York Times Saturday, “If there’s any evidence of some secret nuclear site the Iranians forgot to [mention], this is over.”
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