It was a “revealing” interview.
Yossi Cohen, the outgoing director of Israel’s intelligence services, called Mossad, offered details on some of the The country’s most prominent operations against Iran.
Among other things, Cohen, who retired last week after more than five years as head of Israeli espionage, spoke of the theft of Iran’s nuclear file in 2018, which allowed to remove Tens of thousands of documents out of the country bound for Israel.
Cohen t also hinted Israeli involvement in the destruction of the Natanz nuclear plant , in central Iran, and in the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the most important scientist of the Iranian nuclear program, occurred in November 2020.
The ex-agent spoke with the journalist Ilan Dayan in the program ama Uvda , del Canal 12 from Israel, which was broadcast on television in that country last Thursday night .
Cohen joined the Mossad in 976 after studying at the University of London and told Dayan that he had had “hundreds” of passports throughout his career.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed him head of the Mossad at the end of 2015.
Stolen documents
The most revealing moments of the interview focused on the theft of Iran’s nuclear archive, which occurred in 2018.
Cohen said in the interview that Mossad need or two years to plan the operation .
In total, 20 Mossad agents were involved in the field, but none were Israeli citizens, journalist Ilan Dayan said.
The spy chief monitored the operation from a command center in Tel Aviv. The agents broke into the warehouse and had to open more than 30 safes, he noted.
When images of the treasure appeared on the command center screens, “we felt an emotion amazing, ”said Cohen, according to the newspaper The Times of Israel .
All the agents survived the raid and are fine, he added, although some had to be “taken” out of Iran.
Netanyahu showed the stolen files at a press conference on 2018.
According to him, the documents showed that Iran had tried to manufacture nuclear weapons in a covert manner and that it had withheld technical know-how. Iran denied the accusation.
A remarkable interview
Raffi Berg, Middle East editor , BBC News Online
While it is not unusual for former Mossad chiefs to grant interviews or make their views on certain issues known to the press, Yossi Cohen’s remarks are remarkable for the level of detail they offer.
In fact, The Times of Israel qualifies the interview as “astonishing revealing. ”
As if it were an episode straight out of the pages of a thriller, Cohen describes how the agents opened safes before taking tons of Iranian nuclear documents out of the country while they were being hunted.
In other parts of the interview, he comes closer than ever to admitting that Israel sabotaged an underground Iranian nuclear plant.
The interview, however, is calculated and would have been approved by Israel’s military censors.
The timing of it is also interesting , as talks to reactivate the Iranian nuclear deal are about to resume amid signs of progress.
Also serves as a sort of reminder to Israel’s enemies that Mossad is willing to act far beyond what it considers enemy lines.
Tamper to a nuclear plant
In the interview, Cohen also hinted at Mossad involvement in other operations long rumored to be the work of Israeli agents.
At the beginning of it, the former director of the Mossad told Dayan that he knew the Natanz nuclear plant well and that he could take it to the basement “where the spinning centrifuges are located.” Then he added: “Today, the basement doesn’t look like it used to.”
In July 2020, Iran said sabotage may have caused a fire at that plant, a uranium enrichment complex of about 100, 06 square meters and built eight meters underground.
Then in April 2021, a day after showing new equipment, Iranian authorities said again that the Natanz plant had been sabotaged and had suffered significant damage. Iran accused Israel of “nuclear terrorism” for the incident.
The ex-agent also spoke about Mohsen Fakhrizadeh , the most important nuclear scientist from Iran. Fakhrizadeh was killed on a road outside Tehran in November 2020, an attack that Iran publicly attributed to Israel.
- What were the motives for the assassination of the top scientist in Iran’s nuclear program?
The former Mossad chief did not confirm or deny his participation in the death of Fakhrizadeh. But he said the scientist had been a target “for many years”, adding that his scientific knowledge concerned the agency.
“If man has capabilities that endanger the citizens of Israel, he must cease to exist,” he said, according to The Times of Israel , but added that such a person could be saved “if he is prepared to change his profession and not harm us more.”
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