White House blames typo for statement saying Iran ‘has’ robust nuke program

The White House blamed a clerical error for a statement issued late Monday that said Iran currently “has” a secret nuclear program.

“Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people,” read the original statement issued under the name of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. It appeared to contradict findings by international inspectors who have found Iran to be in compliance with the nuclear deal signed in 2015.

The statement was later changed online from the present to the past tense, saying “Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program.” On Tuesday, Sanders called it a “typo.”

“We think the biggest mistake that was made was under the Obama administration by ever entering the deal that you referenced in the first place,” Sanders told reporters. “The typo that you referenced was noticed, immediately corrected and we are focused on moving forward on the safety and security of our country.”

The White House statement was a response to Monday’s presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who presented a trove of documents obtained from Iran, and accused the Iranian government of lying about its nuclear ambitions during the period preceding the signing of the nuclear deal with the US and other nations.

Netanyahu is a fierce opponent of the nuclear deal, and the timing of his presentation was seen as an effort to strengthen President Donald Trump’s case for scrapping the deal, which trades sanctions relief for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.

On Tuesday, Sanders seemed to echo many of the points made by Netanyahu.

“The problem is that the deal was made on a completely false pretense,” she said. “Iran lied on the front end. They were dishonest actors, and so the deal that was made was made on things that weren’t accurate and we have a big problem with that.”

Trump has said he will decide by May 12 whether the United States will remain part of the deal known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the documents were authentic and much of their content was new to US experts. Pompeo met Netanyahu on Sunday at Israeli military headquarters and was briefed on the material, which was released as Washington’s new top diplomat flew home.

“We’ve known about this material for a while and we certainly discussed this material yesterday when we were together,” Pompeo told reporters on his plane.

“We’re still going through it, there’s still a lot of work to do to figure out the scope and scale of it, but it is the case that there is new information about that program.”

Earlier in the evening US President Donald Trump said  “what we’ve learned has really shown that I’ve been 100 percent right.

“That is just not an acceptable situation, and I’ve been saying that’s happening,” he went on in the White House Rose Garden, alongside Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. “They’re not sitting back idly; they’re setting off missiles, which they say are for television purposes? I don’t think so.”

The American leader also declined to share whether he’s decided to walk away from the landmark agreement by May 12, the next deadline to waive sanctions against the Islamic Republic under the deal. Trump last signed those waivers in January, but he said he would not again unless Congress and European allies amend the pact.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “I’m not telling you what I’m doing, but a lot of people think they know. On or before the 12th, we’ll make a decision. That doesn’t mean we won’t negotiate a real agreement. You know, this is an agreement that wasn’t approved by too many people, and it’s a horrible agreement for the United States.”

Speaking in English at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu displayed slides from documents he said Israel recently obtained from a top-secret facility in Tehran detailing Iran’s long-held nuclear ambitions.

“Iran lied,” Netanyahu said. “Big time.”

The trove that Israel’s Mossad unearthed, he added, amounted to a half-ton of material, including “incriminating documents, incriminating charts, incriminating presentations, incriminating blueprints, incriminating photos, incriminating videos and more.”

Eric Coretllessa and AFP contributed to this report.