Key Mossad docs confirm extent of Iranian nuke plan revealed by Netanyahu
The decades-old documents date from the time of Project Amad, the nuclear project Netanyahu referenced in April.
By YONAH JEREMY BOBUpdated: JULY 16, 2018 09:17Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 30, 2018.(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
New wild details have emerged about how the Mossad stole some of Iran’s most sacred nuclear secrets from under its nose in the heart of Tehran.Israel claims proof Iran "lied" about past nuclear program, April 30, 2018 (ReutersFrom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s April 30 press conference and leaks soon after, it was revealed that there was a new treasure trove of evidence that Iran had been pursuing a nuclear weapons program both before and after 2003 – although there was no evidence of violating the 2015 nuclear deal’s limits – while lying to the world about it.Recently, however, Israeli government officials provided to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, copies of some of those newly revealed documents proving Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts.Maybe more significantly, new details were revealed about how the Mossad scored the secret documents.Apparently, around two dozen Mossad agents were involved – and they were given exactly six hours and 29 minutes to get in and out of the Shirobad facility in Tehran.Intelligence had clearly scoped out the facility well enough to know where the alarms were and how to fake out the alarms so that Iranians monitoring them would think that nothing was wrong.The Mossad agents also knew when guards on the morning rounds would come by and when they would discover the break-in. Iran had purposely not posted a full guard detail in efforts to make the facility appear nondescript.The Mossad break in began around 10:30 p.m. on January 31. They broke through two doors, cut through dozens of giant safes and got out of the city with a half-ton of secret materials.They used special torches burning at least at 3,600 degrees.The agents knew these was hot enough to slice through the 32 Iranian- made safes.
Also, they were focused. Leaving many safes untouched, they first went after the safes containing the black binders, which had the most vital designs.They left at 5:00 a.m. to give them a head-start on the Iranian crew that only discovered the break-in at 7:00 a.m. – too late to catch anyone.No new information was revealed about how the Mossad used trucks to smuggle the documents out of Iran and to Israel.However, according to a report by the Kuwaiti Al Jarida outlet in May, the documents in the two trucks left in different directions to reduce any unwanted attention to the operation and various Mossad agents involved in the extraction dispersed themselves in different parts of Iran.According to the Al Jarida report, only two Mossad agents accompanied a truck to the border with Azerbaijan where they met an additional Mossad team as well as Iranian smugglers.The smugglers did not know what they were moving into Azerbaijan and the country’s government did not know about the operation – though it is a country that has strong relations with Israel, said the report.Once the documents were in Azerbaijan, it was literally smooth sailing in getting them to Israel.What new perspective do these newly-revealed documents give regarding information Netanyahu provided in April? The archive taken from Iran includes pictures taken inside of Iranian nuclear facilities, such as one set of photos from the Parchin military facility, appearing to display a giant metal chamber built to conduct high-powered explosive experiments.The photos appear to confirm intelligence agencies suspicions that Iran had undertaken nuclear weapon’s preparation activities clandestinely at Parchin and then covered them up before IAEA inspectors came to examine it in 2015.Moreover, the documents emphasize communications between key Iranian scientists in Iran’s “Amad” nuclear program discussing how to maintain nuclear activities on a covert basis despite increased scrutiny regarding the Islamic Republic’s overt nuclear activities.
