A newly released secret intelligence report reveals that at the same time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was declaring in 2012 that Iran was only a year away from making a nuclear bomb, Israel's main intelligence agency had determined that Iran was not performing the necessary activities to produce such weapons.
In Sept. 2012, Netanyahu famously stood in front of the U.N. General Assembly brandishing a picture of a cartoonish clipart bomb, warning that Iran was 70 percent finished with producing enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb.
But a Mossad intelligence report obtained by Al Jazeera and The Guardian reveals Iran was "not performing the activity necessary" to develop a nuclear bomb, seemingly contradicting the prime minister's accusations.
Netanyahu asked the U.N. in New York to establish a "clear red line" for Iran's nuclear program to make the country halt its efforts, and said Tehran was "well into the second stage" of enriching its uranium to a medium 20 percent purity level. By next spring, Netanyahu said, "at most by next summer," Iran would have nuclear capability.
In the Mossad report, dated Oct. 22, 2012, shortly after Netanyahu's address, the agency noted, "Even though Iran has accumulated enough five percent enriched uranium for several bombs, and has enriched some of it to 20 percent, it does not appear to be ready to enrich it to higher levels."
"It is allocating some of it to produce nuclear fuel for the [Tehran Research Reactor], and the amount of 20 percent uranium is therefore not increasing," Mossad wrote.
The agency concluded: "Bottom line: though Iran at this stage is not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons, it is working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate such as enrichment, reactors, which will reduce the time required to produce weapons from the time the instruction is actually given."
On Tuesday, a senior Israeli official said that there was no contradiction between Netanyahu's U.N. statements and the Mossad intelligence report, saying that both the prime minister and Mossad said Iran was enriching uranium so they could produce weapons, reported the BBC.
"The central theme of the prime minister's 2012 U.N. speech was that continued Iranian enrichment is creating the 'explosive material', ie enriched uranium, for a nuclear bomb," the unnamed official said.
"Even the alleged quotes from the Mossad state plainly that Iran is 'working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate such as enrichment, reactors, which will reduce the time required to produce weapons from the time the instruction is actually given'."
