The Israeli prime minister claimed the site was discovered in Iranian documents obtained last year.
ADVERTISEMENTJERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Iran had been developing nuclear weapons at a secret site near the city of Abadeh, but that Tehran destroyed the facility after learning it had been exposed.
It was the first time Netanyahu had identified the site, which, he said, was discovered in a trove of Iranian documents Israel previously obtained and disclosed last year.
"In this site, Iran conducted experiments to develop nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks, showing an aerial picture of several small buildings, including their coordinates, that he said were taken at the Abadeh facility late in June 2019.
"When Iran realized that we uncovered the site, here's what they did," he said, showing a picture he said was from a month later in which the buildings no longer appeared. "They destroyed the site. They just wiped it out."
Netanyahu, who strongly opposed a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, made the remarks in a televised speech about a week before a general election in Israel in which he is in a tight race to win another term.
"I call on the international community to wake up, to realize that Iran is systematically lying," Netanyahu said.
"The only way to stop Iran's march to the bomb, and its aggression in the region, is pressure, pressure and more pressure."
Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, angrily rejected the allegation. Responding on Twitter, he said: "The possessor of REAL nukes cries wolf—on an ALLEGED 'demolished' site in Iran"