Netanyahu: Iran Had Secret Nuclear Weapons Development Site in Abadeh

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on
Monday that Iran had been developing nuclear weapons at a secret site near the
city of Abadeh, but that Tehran destroyed the facility after learning it had
been exposed.
It was the first time Netanyahu had identified the
site, which, he said, was discovered in a trove of Iranian documents Israel
previously obtained and disclosed last year.
“In this site, Iran conducted experiments to develop
nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks, showing an aerial
picture of several small buildings, including their coordinates, that he said
were taken at the Abadeh facility late in June 2019.
“When Iran realized that we uncovered the site,
here’s what they did,” he said, showing a picture from a month later in which
the buildings no longer appeared. “They destroyed the site. They just wiped it
out.”
Netanyahu’s comments followed a Reuters report
revealing that the International Atomic Energy Agency found traces of uranium
at a different site in Iran that the Israeli leader had first pointed to during
a speech last year at the United Nations.
Iran had yet to explain the traces of uranium at that
site, though it denies ever having sought a nuclear weapon.
Netanyahu, who strongly opposed a 2015 nuclear deal
between Iran and world powers, made the remarks in a televised speech about a
week before a general election in Israel in which he is in a tight race to win
another term.
“I call on the international community to wake up,
to realize that Iran is systematically lying,” Netanyahu said.
“The only way to stop Iran’s march to the bomb, and
its aggression in the region, is pressure, pressure and more pressure.”