How the Mossad's Iran heist went down, according to a Kuwaiti report

As with most espionage operations, it turns out there might be more to this one than meets the eye.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Updated: MAY 3, 2018 23:30
Israel claims proof Iran "lied" about past nuclear program, April 30, 2018 (Reuters
The Mossad’s getaway for smuggling Iran’s secret nuclear documents out of the country was using trucks to get to the border with Azerbaijan and then crossing the border with help from Iranian smugglers, a report in the Kuwaiti Al Jarida said on Thursday.
There have been contradictory reports about whether or not the Mossad agents who did the smuggling were being chased on their way out, but all reports indicate that the nuclear documents were smuggled to Israel all in one day.
According to the Al Jarida report, the documents were taken out of the warehouse and placed into two trucks.
The two trucks then 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.
Since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Monday bombshell presentation of the secret nuclear documents, wild theories have been spinning about how Israel’s elite spy agency pulled off the daring feat.
A range of prior reports have indicated that the Mossad carried out the raid on the Iran Shirobad district warehouse on January 31.
The Kuwaiti report said 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 with strong relations with Israel, said the report.
Once the documents were in Azerbaijan, it was smooth sailing in getting them to Israel.
A debate then ensued about when or how to present the documents, with some delay caused simply by the awesome task of translating from Persian so many documents in highly specific nuclear lingo.
Eventually, it was decided to forgo the standard quiet leaking of information or providing it only to intelligence colleagues in other countries and to make a major public presentation, while protecting intelligence sources and methods.
Maariv’s Yasser Okbi contributed to this report.


Related Tags
espionage