Cache of over 100,000 secret items stolen from Tehran by Israeli intelligence agents
Israel’s prime minister created shock-waves during prime-time Monday night, delivering a televised 20-minute speech in English (suggesting his message was intended to reverberate across the globe), in which he unveiled a cache of over 100,000 nuclear-related documents and files stolen from a secret facility in Tehran in a covert intelligence mission attributed to the Mossad. According to a New York Times report, Israeli spies in February 2016 discovered a warehouse located in the Shorabad district of the Iranian capital where the archives were being stored; kept the building under surveillance for two years; and, recently, devised an operation to break into the structure and smuggle back to Israel half a ton of material in less than 24 hours.
“Iran lied big time,” Binyamin Netanyahu repeatedly asserted in his address, while using props and a slide-show to demonstrate that the Islamic Republic, despite its frequent denials (which, most significantly, includes not having come clean when the 2015 nuclear accord was forged with world powers), in 1999 created a program—”Project Amad”—geared towards developing atomic weapons. Specifically, the plan was to “design, produce and test five warheads, each with [a] 10-kiloton TNT yield for integration on a missile,” according to text uncovered in one of the records.
In 2003, amid rumors that then-U.S. president George W. Bush was considering attacking Iranian nuclear installations, the Mullahs decided to split Project Amad into an overt program and a hidden one that, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, remained engaged in developing atomic technology under the banner of “scientific know-how.” Jerusalem contends that this work is today still being carried out by an organization inside Iran’s Defense Ministry named SPND, which is headed by the same person who led Project Amad, Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Notably, however, the Israeli premier did not provide any proof that Iran had violated the nuclear agreement. In fact, most of the information he conveyed was revealed years ago by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which on Tuesday declined to address any of Jerusalem’ claims. This therefore raises the distinct possibility that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s primary goal was not to drop any major bombshell, but, rather, to highlight Iran’s propensity to deceive (albeit in a stunt-filled public relations coup for the likes of which the prime minister has become renowned). In doing so, the Israeli leader not only placed Tehran on the docket, but also those countries that he views as enabling the Islamic Republic through their continued promotion of an atomic pact “based on lies.”
Indeed, the presentation comes less than two weeks before a May 12 deadline for U.S. President Donald Trump to decide whether or not to re-impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic, a move that would in all likelihood kill the deal. In this respect, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that Israel’s latest findings reinforce an American intelligence assessment that Tehran had “a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people.” For his part, President Trump described the revelations as “not an acceptable situation” before reiterating that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as it is formally known, is a “horrible agreement for the U.S.”
Accordingly, it appears that Jerusalem and Washington are already on the same page, an indication that the Israeli premier’s target audience was the other parties to the nuclear deal; namely, Russia, China and especially France, Britain and Germany, or the “E3,” which reportedly will send a combined delegation to Jerusalem to examine the acquired atomic files. President Trump, with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s firm backing, has for months been lobbying these European nations to devise a follow-on pact to eliminate the JCPOA’s so-called “sunset clauses—which remove limitations on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium in about a decade—as well as to curb the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program and regional expansionism.
In response, Tehran maintains that the nuclear accord is non-negotiable, with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani having reiterated over the weekend that his country “will not accept any restrictions beyond its commitments.” Moreover, Iran has threatened to “vigorously” jump-start its uranium enrichment program if Washington abandons the agreement.