Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dramatic presentation on Iran’s defunct nuclear program — with his claim that tens of thousands of files prove there was an effort to build and test weapons — didn’t contain any big surprises for the U.S. intelligence community, two U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.
The information unveiled by Netanyahu with great fanfare on Monday has largely been known to American intelligence agencies for years, the officials said, confirming the assessment of Washington lawmakers and private experts.
Other U.S. intelligence officials added that nothing in the documents, which Netanyhu said were smuggled out of Tehran, has changed the American intelligence judgment that Iran is living up to its agreement not to restart a nuclear weapons program, as American intelligence officials told senators Feb. 13.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Tel Aviv on Sunday.Thomas Coex / Pool via Reuters
Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo reconfirmed that assessment when asked about it during his confirmation hearing on April 12. “With the information I’ve been provided, I’ve seen no evidence that they are not in compliance today,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Outside experts were dismissive of Netanyahu’s presentation.
“There is literally nothing new here,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert who favors the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran from which President Trump is contemplating an American exit.
Nothing in Netanyau’s presentation suggested that Iran had restarted a secret nuclear program. He argued instead that by keeping the archive — and maintaining the position of a key nuclear scientist who once ran the weapons program — they could restart very quickly. Defenders of the deal say that is precisely why the U.S. should not give Iran an excuse to do so by exiting the deal.
Lewis’ view was echoed by American intelligence officials, who told NBC News that while the documents may contains new details, the story they tell — that Iran once had an unauthorized nuclear program — is an old one.
It was largely described in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which said that U.S. spies “judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”
The document added, “We also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.”
“It’s nothing new,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told Bloomberg Television. “This is really not groundbreaking —we’ve known of this for some time.”
Netanyahu during a news conference at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv on Monday.Amir Cohen / Reuters
Pompeo told reporters that Israel briefed the U.S. on the documents so the Americans could authenticate them. Now, Israel is giving them to the other signatories to the Iran deal—Britain, France and Germanty.
Corker said he doesn’t think the Israeli presentation should effect the Trump administration calculus about whether to pull out of the deal.
But some U.S. officials fear it will, and they cite a mistake made by the White House press office Monday night, which issued a news release saying that Iran “has” a “robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program.”
The White House later corrected the statement on its website, but never sent out a corrected news release – blaming the mistake on a “clerical error.”
Asked to respond to Corker, Pompeo, who has been critical of the Iran deal, told reporters on his flight back from the Middle East Monday night:
“Well, that’s partly true. The existence of the (nuclear weapons) program that ended roughly December of 2003, January of 200– it is accurate to say that the knowledge of that has been known for – the fact of that had been known for quite some time. But there are thousands of new documents and new information. We’re still going through it. There’s still a lot of work to do to figure out precisely the scope and scale of it.”
However, the International Atomic Energy Agency — the global nuclear watchdog, which conducts inspections in Iran, hunting for evidence it is violating the nuclear deal — has also concluded that Netanyahu’s announcement was old news.
In December 2015, the agency reminded people in a statement, the IAEA issued a detailed report on Iran’s nuclear program.
“In the report, the Agency assessed that, before the end of 2003, an organizational structure was in place in Iran suitable for the coordination of a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”
Although some activities took place after 2003, they were not part of a coordinated effort, the IAEA said.
The report also concluded that the international watchdog “had no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009.”
Netanyahu said the documents he revealed, stolen by Israel’s Mossad spy agency, showed that Iran has been lying for years about its nuclear program.
Damn, the Mossad is good. This would be like the CIA getting into the Kremlin and taking the files out.
Damn, the Mossad is good. This would be like the CIA getting into the Kremlin and taking the files out.
That is true, U.S. officials told NBC News. It was also factored into the Obama nuclear deal, which calls for a robust inspection regime.
However, most analysts believe Netanyahu’s speech — in English with giant visual aids — was not trying to persuade American analysts or diplomats. He was trying to influence an audience of one: President Trump, who already has denounced the nuclear deal and expressed a desire to end it.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ret. Adm. James Stavridis said there is “less here than meets the eye.” He added that his first reaction was: “Damn, the Mossad is good. This would be like the CIA getting into the Kremlin and taking the files out.”
“To me this validates the need for a deal to stop them,” he said.
President Trump lashed out Tuesday at the publication of questions that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was said to be interested in asking him as part of the Russia probe and possible attempts to obstruct the inquiry.
In a morning tweet, Trump said it was “disgraceful” that the 49 questions were provided to the New York Times, which published them Monday night.
“So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were ‘leaked’ to the media,” he wrote on Twitter.
So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were “leaked” to the media. No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!
It appears that the leak did not come from Mueller’s office. The Times reported that the questions were relayed to Trump’s attorneys as part of negotiations over the terms of a potential interview with the president. The list was then provided to the Times by a person outside Trump’s legal team, the paper said.
In his tweet, Trump also falsely asserts that there are no questions about “Collusion.”
While the questions published by the Times are wide-ranging — and include more related to possible obstruction of justice — the list includes 13 related to possible cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Among those is a query about Trump’s knowledge of any outreach by his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort to Russia “about potential assistance to the campaign.” A court filing this month revealed that Mueller had sought authorization to expand his probe into allegations that Manafort “committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials.”
Another question asks about Trump’s knowledge of a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between his aides and a Russian lawyer who offered politically damaging information on Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
And another asks what Trump knew about “Russian hacking, use of social media or other acts aimed at the campaign?”
In his tweet, Trump calls collusion “a phony crime” and repeats his claim that none existed. The president also derides Mueller’s investigation as having “begun with illegally leaked classified information,” adding: “Nice!”
That is a reference to notes that former FBI director James B. Comey provided to a friend documenting his interactions with Trump. The president has said that action, which prompted the appointment of a special counsel, amounted to illegally leaking classified information and that Comey should be imprisoned.
Comey, whom Trump fired last year, has said repeatedly that the information was not classified. He and Trump have been sparring over the issue as Comey continues a publicity tour to promote his new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” which portrays Trump as an ego-driven and congenital liar.
In a later tweet Tuesday morning, Trump wrote that it “would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened!”
But that, legal experts, say is a misunderstanding of the law.
“This is flat wrong,” said Randall D. Eliason, a former assistant U.S. attorney who teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School.
“The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether a crime was committed, and, regardless of the ultimate answer to that question, it is a separate crime to attempt to obstruct that inquiry,” Eliason said. “It’s also true, of course, that we don’t yet know that the underlying crime ‘never happened.’ ”
It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!
Trump has said previously that he would be willing to have a face-to-face meeting with Mueller or his team, but more recently he has wavered on the prospect.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s new personal lawyer dealing with the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, met with Mueller last week to reopen negotiations for a possible presidential interview.
Giuliani conveyed the ongoing resistance of Trump and his advisers to an interview but did not rule out the possibility, according to people familiar with the talks.
Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, said later Tuesday morning that White House officials are frustrated that much of Mueller’s focus seems to be outside his original aim of investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Appearing on Fox News, Shah said he couldn’t speak to the accuracy of the questions published by the Times. But, he said, “if they are accurate, the overwhelming majority of those questions don’t focus on the underlying premise of this special counsel.”
