Mossad Iran Op. still paying dividends with IAEA – sources

The already mythical operation proved beyond any doubt that Iran’s nuclear program until 2003 had been military in nature.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Mossad Logo (photo credit: LOGO)
Mossad Logo
(photo credit: LOGO)
The Mossad’s operation to appropriate Iranian nuclear secrets in 2018 is still paying dividends deep into 2020 by bringing the IAEA into a standoff with Tehran, sources with knowledge have told The Jerusalem Post.
The Post has also learned that almost all of the evidence upon which the IAEA bases its claims and its probe of the Islamic Republic stem from the secret Iranian nuclear archive obtained by the Mossad in January 2018.
The already mythical operation proved beyond any doubt that Iran’s nuclear program until 2003 had been military in nature. It also proved that Iran took significant measures to try to cover up and store its nuclear military research and progress even after the 2015 nuclear deal.
Western intelligence had speculated that Iran was looking into nuclear test sites, but the Mossad operation revealed the exact locations of the five sites – two in the Semnan Region in the northern center of the country and three in the Lot Desert in the country’s central eastern region.
In September 2019, the Post learned that the mapping out of additional potential Iranian clandestine nuclear sites was probably the greatest continuing achievement of the Mossad operation.
While the IAEA has not admitted publicly that all of its leads came from the Iranian nuclear archive, off the record, numerous officials with knowledge of the IAEA probe have acknowledged this to different media outlets.
In March, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said, “The Agency has identified a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three locations that have not been declared by Iran.”
“The Agency sought access to two of the locations. Iran has not provided access to these locations and has not engaged in substantive discussions to clarify the Agency’s questions,” said Grossi.
The IAEA director-general continued, “This is adversely affecting the Agency’s ability to clarify and resolve these questions and to provide credible assurance of the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran,” calling on Iran to provide “prompt access.”
Leaked portions from this weekend of the new IAEA report which will be provided to the IAEA Board of Governors next week continued to raise “serious concerns” over Iran’s “denying access” to international inspectors for investigating possible past nuclear activities at the two locations.
In addition, the IAEA has confronted Tehran over undeclared radioactive nuclear material found at the Turquzabad site, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in September 2018 based on the Mossad operation.
Further, the Iranian archive revealed by the spy agency gave the specific number of five warheads of 10 kilotons as the Iranian goal.
Experts had long debated whether Iran was looking to make one dirty bomb, a full mature nuclear arsenal or something in between.
Information from the archive indicated that Iran’s nuclear weapons goals over the years, while dangerous, were also modest – which is valuable to know for either diplomacy or any future potential strike on those capabilities.
Besides these headline items, the archive greatly increased the depth of understanding for Israel and the West of virtually every aspect of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
The operation was personally managed by Mossad Director Yossi Cohen who made various calls in real-time about broadening the mission’s goals from nabbing physical paper files to also seizing a large amount of unexpected electronic data files.


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