WASHINGTON – Israel’s nighttime mission earlier this year to steal nuclearsecrets from an Iranian warehouse has been detailed by Israeli officialsspeaking to the New York Timeslink,in an article published on Sunday.
The mission resulted in Israel obtaining documents suggesting Iran defiedthe spirit of its 2015 accord on its nuclear program with the UnitedStates, European powers, Russia and China, Al Arabiya has reported.
The six-and-a-half-hour mission included two dozen spies, sophisticatedalarm systems, metal safes and high-powered gadgets that targeted awarehouse in Tehran, according to the report.
Mossad agents reportedly knew that the warehouse had a trove of damningdata and monitored the location for a year, learning how they could crackthe best part of 32 Iranian-built safes.
At 10.30 p.m. on Jan. 31, a team of two dozen Mossad agents – mostlyIranian double spies – breached the warehouse by tampering with the alarmsystem to make it appear functional even as they had their run of the place.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’snuclear program at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2018. (AP)
As there were no guards stationed outside the warehouse at night, “to keepthe site’s profile low,” the agents were able to tear through the safeswith special torches that reached a 3,600 degrees.
They managed to leave with about 50,000 pages and 163 compact discs’ worthof intelligence and pulled out at 5 a.m., before the warehouse guardsresumed their posts at 7.a.m.
In April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the findingslinkafterIsrael had combed through the documents.
Netanyahu said that the intelligence proved Iran had been holding ontoinformation from its ostensibly defunct nuclear research program, signalingits aspiration to resume its research.
Iranians have since claimed that the Israeli haul is fabricated, but US andBritish officials validated it. Another report, from the Washington Post,said that Iran was on the verge of acquiring “key bombmaking technologies”when the program, code-named Project Amad, was halted some 15 years ago.