Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s theatrical presentation on April 30 of what he claimed was dramatic new evidence of Iran pushing on with efforts to hide and even expand acquired nuclear weapons knowhow immediately ran into a spot of bother—a former senior official of the UN nuclear watchdog pointed out that he had already seen at least some of the so-called key evidence 13 years ago and that it was made public in 2011.

Iran was quick to describe Netanyahu’s claims as a “rehash of old allegations”.

In a televised prime-time speech from Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu claimed Israeli agents had obtained half a tonne of documents from what he called Iran’s “Atomic Archives”. But Olli Heinonen, former chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was quoted by the Guardian as saying his department first saw documentation that Netanyahu presented as new back in 2005. The safeguards department that Heinonen ran concluded that the evidence of Iranian nuclear weapon design work known as the Amad Project was credible, but that substantial work on the project ended in 2003. A classified briefing on Amad was given to the IAEA board in 2008.

After watching Netanyahu’s presentation, Heinonen reportedly said: “I just saw a lot of pictures I had seen before.”

 Nevertheless, the impact of Netanyahu’s ploy to use the political theatre as part of his effort to persuade Donald Trump to pull the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal—which shields Iran from crippling economic sanctions in return for the acceptance of measures designed to block its path to developing a nuclear weapon—was soon clear. Trump, who is due to decide on whether to keep Washington in the multilateral accord by May 12, said at the White House that Israel’s evidence proved he was “100% right” about flaws in the agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA). He added: “I’ve been saying it’s [Iran’s nuclear activities] happening. They’re not sitting back idly.”

“Crying wolf”
Netanyahu told his TV audience: “Iran lied, big time.” He added. “Iran is brazenly lying when it said it never had a nuclear weapons programme.” US officials said the documents showed that the JCPOA was not built on good faith as Tehran had not properly detailed its past nuclear programme work.

Moments before Netanyahu spoke, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who called the Israeli PM’s performance a “childish stunt”, tweeted: “The boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again. Undeterred by cartoon fiasco at UNGA. You can only fool some of the people so many times.”

Zarif’s latter tweet was an allusion to September 2012 when Netanyahu presented a cartoon graphic of a bomb to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and said: "By next spring, at most by next summer at current [uranium] enrichment rates, [Iran] will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb."

Subsequently, in 2015, leaked cables revealed that around the time Netanyahu spoke before the UNGA an Israeli intelligence assessment had concluded that Iran did not appear ready to enrich uranium to levels required for a nuclear bomb.

John Hughes, a former deputy director for sanctions at the US State Department who worked on the nuclear deal, told media he had not seen anything in the Israeli PM’s presentation that would change the deal. "I think, frankly, this was a political statement meant to try to influence President Trump's decision on whether to pull out of the deal," he said. "I think it's mostly recycled material."

Trump on April 24 labelled the nuclear deal as “insane”.

EU’s Mogherini sees no violation
Apart from the US, all the other signatories to the nuclear deal—the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China—are fully behind efforts to preserve it. The European Union's foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said Netanyahu's latest allegations that Iran once pursued nuclear weapons do not appear to show Iran is currently violating the nuclear agreement that took effect in January 2016. Saying it is "first and foremost" the IAEA that must assess whether Iran is abiding by the deal, she said that that is because "the IAEA is the only impartial, international organisation that is in charge of monitoring Iran's nuclear commitments".

BBC News diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus was also less than thrilled by Netanyahu’s stage show, writing: “This was political theatre from the Israeli prime minister, but to what extent was it revelation? Israel's claim to have been able to steal or access files and documents from what it says was the secret Iranian nuclear archive located in a warehouse in south Tehran may be a tale of daring espionage in itself but, beyond that, what is really new?”

The Islamic Republic’s claims that it has never had the ambition to develop a nuclear weapon have of course been widely rejected for many years. For instance, a 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate assessed "with high confidence" that Iran did have a nuclear weapons programme up until 2003 but that Tehran stopped it after it was discovered.

So why did Netanyahu make his claims live on television precisely when he did? Perhaps because this week may come to be historically viewed as bringing a gear change in the aggressive campaign being mounted by the US, Israel and regional arch-rival of Iran, Saudi Arabia, among others, to diminish Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East. On April 29, new US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and afterwards told a press conference:  "[President Trump has] a comprehensive Iran plan that is designed to counter the full array of threats emanating from Tehran… [Washington is] deeply concerned about Iran's dangerous escalation of threats to Israel and the region."

Earlier in the day, Pompeo met with Saudi Arabia's King Salman after flying into Riyadh the previous evening and dining with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. Speaking at a joint press conference with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, Pompeo reiterated that Iran "supports proxy militias and terrorist groups". He added: "It is an arms dealer to the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iran conducts cyberhacking campaigns. And it supports the murderous Assad regime [in Syria]. Unlike the prior administration we will not neglect the vast scope of Iran's terrorism."

During his joint appearance with Netanyahu, Pompeo also commented: “President Trump’s been pretty clear. This [nuclear] deal is very flawed… He’s directed the administration to try and fix it, and if we can’t fix it, he’s going to withdraw from the deal. It’s pretty straightforward.”

The IAEA, meanwhile, continues to bluntly state the Iranians are in full compliance with the JCPOA. “Iran is subject to the world’s most robust nuclear verification regime,” IAEA chief coordinator Cornel Feruta told diplomats on April 23 in Geneva, according to Reuters. The agency captures hundreds of thousands of images daily and analyses millions of sources of open-source data each month, he said.

"Three additional, indispensable subjects"
Though as always it is difficult to say with any certainty which road Trump might take, Europe’s efforts to create a supplementary deal that addresses points—which to the US president’s displeasure are not dealt with by JCPOA—appear to be floundering. According to French President Emmanuel Macron there are "three additional, indispensable subjects", namely Tehran's ballistic missile programme, its nuclear activities after 2025 when the current demands of the nuclear deal are relaxed, and "the main regional crises" in the Middle East.

On April 30, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Washington of trying to stoke a “regional crisis” by provoking Saudi Arabia to confront Tehran. “One of the ways to confront Iran is to provoke inexperienced rulers of the region,” he said, in what seemed to be a reference to Saudi Arabia’s 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

He added: “Americans are trying to provoke Saudi Arabia against Tehran... Their aim is to create more regional crisis... to push Muslims to fight against Muslims. If these governments gain more wisdom, they will not confront Iran. If they confront Iran, they will be defeated.”

The Elysee Palace said on April 29 that President Macron and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani had agreed "to work in the coming weeks on preserving the contents of the 2015 agreement with all its components". It added that the two presidents would address additional vital subjects, presumably those of concern to Trump.

However, the Iranian presidency said Rouhani had told Macron: "The nuclear deal or any other subject under its pretext is not negotiable in any way… Iran will not accept any restrictions beyond its commitments."