JERUSALEM -- Israel's prime minister on Sunday stepped up his calls for world powers to end the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran as President Donald Trump decides whether to withdraw from the agreement by next week.
In a briefing to foreign reporters, Benjamin Netanyahu said the world would be better off without any deal than with what he called the "fatally flawed" agreement reached in 2015.
Also on Sunday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country has been preparing for months for the possibility that Trump will pull out of the nuclear agreement, warning that the U.S. would quickly come to regret such a decision.
Netanyahu said Israel is sharing a trove of confiscated Iranian nuclear documents with the six world powers that signed the deal, as well as other countries, in hopes of mounting further opposition to the deal. He heads to Moscow later this week for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, where talks will focus on the Iranian nuclear program and Iran's involvement in neighboring Syria.
"I said it from the start, it has to be either fully fixed or fully nixed," Netanyahu said. "But if you do nothing to this deal, if you keep it as is, you will end up with Iran with a nuclear arsenal in a very short time."
Netanyahu was a vocal opponent of the deal when it was reached during President Barack Obama's administration. The agreement lifted economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
Netanyahu has repeatedly argued that the deal will not prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capability after its restrictions expire in the next decade or so. Trump has voiced similar objections and hinted he will withdraw from the deal unless it is renegotiated.
Netanyahu did not accuse Iran of violating the deal. Instead, he said the deal was so weak that Iran has no need to break it. He said the flaws include permission for Iran to continue some low-level enrichment of uranium and its continued development of long-range missiles capable of delivering a bomb. He said the nuclear documents unveiled by Israel last week prove that Iran also pursued the know-how to develop and detonate a bomb.
"I say that a deal that enables Iran to keep and hide all its nuclear weapons know-how, is a horrible deal," he said.
Netanyahu last week showed off what he said was a "half ton" of Iranian nuclear documents dating back to 2003.
A senior Israeli intelligence official said there were over 100,000 pages of documents that gave Israel new insight into how far the Iranian nuclear program progressed. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity under briefing guidelines, said the volume of information showed the program was more "comprehensive and robust" than previously thought.
In Iran, Rouhani said government officials received instructions months ago on what to do in the event the U.S. decides to end waivers on key sanctions on Saturday, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The Iranian president said he'd met with officials from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran in recent days and discussed a "clear path" ahead.
"The U.S. has always sought to sow intrigue against Iran but has never succeeded in the face of Iran's greatness," Rouhani said in a speech, addressing crowds at a rally in the northeastern city of Sabzevar. "This time, once again, it is also making a mistake. And if it wants to leave the nuclear deal, it will quickly see that this decision will be a regret of historic proportions."
Rouhani added that there would be no negotiations on limiting Iran's missile power or regional influence.
"Our nation honors its commitments, but it plainly tells the whole world, Europe, America, West and East: We will not negotiate our weapons and defense of our country with anybody," Rouhani said. "What decision the Iranian nation has made for self-defense is nobody's business."
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Trump's criticism of the deal has given Netanyahu a rare chance to reopen negotiations that appeared to have concluded in 2015. So far, Europe, China and Russia have shown no interest in revisiting the topic.
European countries have said Netanyahu's presentation only reinforced the importance of the agreement, which provides for inspections.
The European parties to the deal -- some of whom, like Germany, have seen a surge in exports to Iran since the deal came into effect in January 2016 -- have tried in recent weeks to persuade Trump not to pull out.
Earlier on Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron said France and its allies need to be careful about how they handle Iran because terrorist groups may "prosper" from the conflict between Shiites and Sunnis. Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was visiting Washington on Sunday in an effort to salvage the pact and was due to meet with Vice President Mike Pence.
Macron reiterated that he wants to maintain the Iranian nuclear accord, while "complementing" it with talks on Iran's ballistic-missile program and regional activities, according to an interview he gave to Le Journal du Dimanche.
In an op-ed Sunday for The New York Times, Johnson wrote that the agreement offered the fewest disadvantages of all the options available. "It has weaknesses, certainly, but I am convinced they can be remedied. Indeed at this moment Britain is working alongside the Trump administration and our French and German allies to ensure that they are," he wrote.
Britain's ambassador to the U.S. said Sunday that his country believes it's still possible to address Trump's concerns in time to prevent him from pulling out of the agreement.
Kim Darroch said Britain has ideas for dealing with concerns, including Iran's ballistic-missile program and its involvement in Mideast conflicts, issues that aren't part of the international agreement.
"We think that we can find some language, produce some action that meets the president's concerns," Darroch told CBS' Face the Nation.
It remains unclear what would happen if the U.S. withdraws from the deal but the other countries remain committed.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee also said Sunday that he "would counsel against" Trump pulling the U.S. out of the deal this week.
"I thought it was a bad deal," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. "But the key question is, 'OK, now we are where we are, what happens next if the U.S. pulls out?'"
Thornberry suggested that Iran could kick out inspectors if the deal is scrapped, "so that we lose what visibility we have there." He also said rising tensions between Iran and Israel would make it crucial for the U.S. and its allies in the deal "to be united to prevent that conflict."
"Maybe the best thing is for the president to delay a bit more his deadline," Thornberry said on Fox News Sunday. He suggested that the United Kingdom and France could pursue their suggestion of new negotiations to strengthen the deal.
Yoel Guzansky, an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank, said Trump is playing "a game of chicken" with Iran in hopes of renegotiating a better deal.
"They hope that by threatening to walk away from the deal they might get that. I am not so sure, not so sure, the Europeans are not on board, of course the Russians and the Chinese are not on board," he said. Walking away, he added, could have hard-to-predict consequences.
Israel considers Iran its archenemy, citing Iran's calls for Israel's destruction, support for militant groups across the region and growing military activity in neighboring Syria. Israel is believed to have been behind recent airstrikes on Syrian military bases that killed Iranian soldiers, prompting Tehran to vow retaliation. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
The possibility of the nuclear deal collapsing has raised concerns it might embolden Iran to strike Israeli targets.
Netanyahu told his Cabinet earlier Sunday that Iran has delivered advanced weapons to Syria "in order to attack us both on the battlefield and on the homefront."
Information for this article was contributed by Josef Federman and staff members of The Associated Press; by Ben Brody and Golnar Motevalli of Bloomberg News; and by Isabel Kershner and Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times.
A Section on 05/07/2018