Netanyahu: Iran Using 'Very Bad Deal' to Build Nuclear Arsenal

Iran, "the preeminent terrorist regime of our time" has had a secret nuclear program all along, and it should not be able to continue a deal that will allow it to extend its nuclear arsenal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.

"The preeminent terrorist regime of our time, in which its goons chant 'death to America, death to Israel, this regime had a secret nuclear weapons program, and they are trying under a very bad deal to get a nuclear arsenal," Netanyahu told Fox News' "Fox & Friends."

"They shouldn't get it."

Monday, the prime minister revealed, in detail, what he called a "half ton" of Iranian nuclear documents collected by Israeli intelligence, which he said proves the nation's leader had covered up its nuclear weapons program before sigining the Iran nuclear deal with other nations in 2015.

"I won't say how we got it and who got it, but Israel obtained this information actually in February," Netanyahu told Fox News Tuesday. "It's 100,000-plus documents, a huge trove, as you say. It's in Farsi."

Netanyahu's public revelation of the documents took place a little under two weeks before President Donald Trump's May 12 deadline for certifying the deal, but the president has known about the information for much longer, the prime minister said.

"I met with the president in early March, President Trump," Netanyahu said. "I described to him what we have. I said that we'll move immediately all this information to the United States which we did. So we have been examining it simultaneously, here in Israel and here in America."

Iran already, even without nuclear weapons, is "gobbling up one country after the other," Netanyahu said. Tuesday. "It's threatening to annihilate Israel, threatening to put its army in Syria in the service of the tyrannical regime.

"It's putting precision guided [missiles] in Lebanon. That means they can fire rockets into Israel that can hit the office I'm speaking from and everything else."

Further, he said, "they hate America's guts. If that's what they are doing without nuclear weapons, think what will happen if they get an arsenal of nuclear weapons, if this deal goes through as is."

Netanyahu said he's glad Trump has "stood so firmly and clearly on this issue."

The deal is not in the best interest of Israel and the United States, he added, and "it's not in the interest of the world. This tyrannical anti-American regime should not have nuclear weapons."

Newly appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. intelligence officials have said Iran is currently in compliance with the deal, show co-host Ainsley Earhardt said, but that doesn't "help at all," said Netanyahu.

"Assuming Iran just complies complies with it, they go the distance and have within a few years, like President Trump said yesterday, they will have the wherewithal to produce a hundred nuclear bombs," said Netanyahu. "That doesn't justify continuing with the deal and I think certainly not continuing with it as structured."

He said he does trust Trump's judgment and believes he will do the right thing for America, Israel and the world.

Netanyahu also said that when the nuclear deal was reached, it was under the premise Iran would come clean and admit if it had a nuclear weapons program, but that didn't happen.

"They lied," he said. "They lied to the International Atomic Energy Agency and they were supposed to come clean. That was the premise of the deal. So, the deal was flawed from the start by many things. Including on this very central premise."

The people who worked on the country's secret nuclear weapons program embedded them in other programs, he continued, and continued their "dual use programs."

"If this thing is so unnecessary, you know, you got to tell me this." Netanyahu said. "Why did they keep this archive, this secret atomic file so secret? Why did they hide it? They hid it with extra special effort after signed the Iran nuclear deal. Because they knew, they lied."

Meanwhile, Netanyahu praised Trump for his move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to open the United States' embassy there.

"I think President Trump did a historic thing and people will remember it for many, many generations," said Netanyahu. "I am sitting right now in the prime minister's office it's in Jerusalem. Right next to me is our parliament. In Jerusalem. Right next to that is our Supreme Court. That's in Jerusalem, too.

“And the seat of our president, that's in Jerusalem. So, everybody knows that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. It's been the capital of the Jewish people from king David's time. That's 3,000 years ago."

Israel deeply appreciates the move, said Netanyahu, and he would "love to have him here" to open the new embassy.

"It's his decision," the prime minister said. "He has an open invitation."