US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Benjamin Netanyahu “may not be correct” after the Israeli Prime Minister has criticized the US and others for “giving up” and “accepting” that Iran will have nuclear weapons.
After the latest Iran nuclear talks in Geneva, John Kerry told senators President Obama had made it clear the policy was not to let Iran get nuclear weapons and Netanyahu might therefore not be correct, according to BBC.
Kerry’s statement was a reaction to a speech in which the Israeli PM had said the US and others were “accepting that Iran will gradually, within a few years, develop capabilities to produce material for many nuclear weapons”.
“I respect the White House and the president of the United States but on such a fateful matter, that can determine whether or not we survive, I must do everything to prevent such a great danger for Israel,” he said in a speech in Israel.
The rising tensions between Israel and the US coincide with Netanyahu’s planned visit at the beginning of March when he will address the Congress although the White House criticized the invitation made by the Republican leaders. US officials fear the sensitive negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program could be damaged by the Israeli leader’s aggressive rhetoric. Netanyahu has already vowed to block any agreement and the Democrats think he’s speech in the Congress will give him a platform when the talks enter a critical point.
Earlier this week, confidential documents published by Al-Jazeera and The Guardian revealed that he was contradicted by his own secret service when he stated at the UN, in 2012, that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb. The leaks show that Mossad concluded at the time that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”.
Israel’s intelligence agency concluded that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”. The report shared with South Africa notes that even though there was enough 5 percent enriched uranium for several bombs and even some enriched to 20 percent, Iranians weren’t ready to enrich it to higher levels and they were allocating some of it to produce nuclear fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor.