Derisive response to PM’s exposé shows world still refusing to get real on Iran - The 2015 accord did not dismantle Iran's nuke program, nor block its path to the bomb. If the negotiators knew everything Iran was up to, their failure is all the more indefensible

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presents material on Iranian nuclear weapons development during a press conference in Tel Aviv, April 30 2018. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

Why would they violate the terms of an agreement that dismantled the painstakingly constructed sanctions regime that forced them to the negotiating table in the first place, and risk the re-imposition of those sanctions?

And why, finally, would they violate the terms of an agreement whose “sunset clauses” mean they need merely wait a few years before resuming their march to the bomb?


From left: EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini; Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif; British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond; and US Secretary of State John Kerry line up for a press announcement at the nuclear talks in Lausanne, Switzerland, April 2, 2015. (photo credit: AP/Keystone, Jean-Christophe Bott)

No, Israel’s contention is not that Iran is breaching the deal. It is, rather, that this agreement, far from preventing Iran from attaining a nuclear weapons arsenal, paves Iran’s path to it.

And what that haul of Iran’s own documentation conclusively demonstrated is that this is precisely what Iran intends to do. Compelled to freeze the program in 2003, Iran is merely biding its time before resuming nuclear weapons-related activities, empowered by the R&D progress it is being allowed to make under the terms of the accord.

Nothing new? That makes it worse

Netanyahu’s critics further assert that there was nothing new in the material he presented — nothing new in the showcasing of Iran’s own evidence of its deceit, and of the specifics of its nuclear weapons program.

First of all, that criticism is patently false. The International Atomic Energy Agency, in its own reporting, has never claimed to have attained remotely comparable access to Iran’s own documentation. The Mossad spirited out 100,000 files. The P5+1 negotiators should race to pore over the material.

But secondly, if it is the P5+1’s contention that they knew every detail of the program as now conclusively presented by Netanyahu, and knew therefore the precise extent of Iran’s duplicity, then how could they possibly have negotiated so lax an accord with the ayatollahs?


Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, right, and the European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini arrive to attend a press briefing after their meeting, in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 16, 2016. (AP /Ebrahim Noroozi)

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, one of the cheerleaders of the 2015 deal, grandly declared on Monday night that the pact “was put in place exactly because there was no trust between the parties; otherwise we would not have required a nuclear deal to be put in place.”

Wow, let’s read that again: We knew they were lying, and that’s why we had to put this accord into place.

Put it another way: We knew they were lying, and that’s why we cut a lousy deal with them, a deal that did not dismantle the nuclear program we knew they had even though they swore blind that they didn’t.

It must have been galling for the P5+1 negotiators and their defenders to watch that irritating Netanyahu strutting around in front of those shelves of files and those racks of CDs, claiming vindication and underlining the negotiators’ scandalous failure

We knew they were lying, and that’s why we cut a lousy deal with them that allowed them to boast that they had faced down and outsmarted the West.

We knew they were lying, and that’s why, when the sanctions had finally put them on the ropes, we cut a lousy deal with them that lifted the economic pressure — and thus entrenched their repressive regime in power, the better to oppress their own people, and gave them the financial resources to spread havoc and bloodshed throughout the region.

It must have been galling for the P5+1 negotiators and their defenders to watch that irritating Netanyahu strutting around in front of those shelves of files and those racks of CDs, claiming vindication and underlining the negotiators’ scandalous failure.

But the fact is that the 2015 deal was a terrible, misconstructed accord. It let the duplicitous Iranians off the hook. It did not dismantle the weapons program they still lie about. It did not close their path to a nuclear weapons arsenal.

I wonder when the negotiators and their defenders will finally apologize for their failure. When Iran starts testing its nukes, perhaps? Or will they still be sneering then?


File: An Iranian worker at the Uranium Conversion Facility at Isfahan, 410 kilometers south of Tehran, January 2014. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Mossad agents snuck nuclear files out of Iran with authorities ‘on their tails’ - TV reports say Israel utilized expansive operational infrastructure on Iranian soil; PM's exposé said aimed chiefly at IAEA; unconfirmed report of mass arrests in Iran after breach

A warehouse in Shorabad, south Tehran, where Mossad agents discovered and extracted tens of thousands of secret files pertaining to Iran's nuclear weapons program (Prime Minister's Office)

Agents of Israel’s spy agency Mossad smuggled hundreds of kilograms of paper and digital files on Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program out of the Islamic Republic with Iranian agents “on their tails,” Hadashot television news reported Tuesday night, based on briefings by Israeli officials.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed the operation Monday as he displayed the trove of documents in a presentation aimed at proving that Iran has lied about its covert atomic weapons program.

The operation required an expansive operational infrastructure within Iranian territory, Hadashot reported.

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The warehouse storing the files was located in the Shorabad suburb in southern Tehran, in an industrial area. Mossad discovered the warehouse in February 2016, and had had the building under surveillance since then. Before arriving at the site, the secret archives had been moved by Iranian authorities several times in a bid to keep their whereabouts a secret.

In late January of this year, Mossad agents received pinpoint information pointing them to certain safes in a specific container inside the warehouse. The team then broke in, removed the files and transferred them to a secondary location.


Safes inside a warehouse in Shorabad, south Tehran, where Mossad agents discovered and extracted tens of thousands of secret files pertaining to Iran’s nuclear weapons program (Prime Minister’s Office)

From there a complex extraction operation began.

According to Hadashot, Iranian officials realized that information had been taken before the files were out of the country. Mossad agents managed to smuggle the data out of Iran with authorities “on their tails,” searching for them.

According to a New York Times report Monday, agents broke into the building, took the documents and moved them back to Israel that same night.

Intelligence Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday said the operation was unprecedented in Israel’s history.

“When the idea of ??the operation was first presented, I did not believe they could achieve it,” he told the Ynet news site. “They did something unprecedented here. They took tons of authentic documents here — and brought them here.”

The warehouse was maintained by the Revolutionary Guard’s Intelligence Organization, formed in 2009 by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and headed by cleric Hossein Taeb.

Hadashot Arab affairs analyst Ehud Ya’ari said Western officials now believe a reckoning is in store for Taeb and other officials under whose watch the top secret files were taken.

Channel 10 News’s Arab affairs correspondent Zvi Yehezkeli said Tuesday Iranian authorities had launched a wave of arrests following Netanyahu’s exposé, and that those responsible could face execution.

Hadashot further reported that though Israel was anxious to provide the data it has obtained to the US, Europe and other allies, its most important audience may be the International Atomic Energy Agency. Israeli leaders are intent on demonstrating to the atomic watchdog the depth of Iranian deception, and to reveal to them the infrastructure of lies upon which Tehran based its 2015 nuclear accord with world powers.

Hadashot said that the decision to publicize the contents of the intelligence heist was taken at a meeting involving Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, Mossad head Yossi Cohen, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, and head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Tamir Hayman.

All reportedly agreed that the data should be publicized with “as much noise as possible.”

Netanyahu on Monday night appeared on TV to present the file trove, saying it was a vast archive of Iran’s own documentation demonstrating that Tehran worked to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal and brazenly lied to the international community about it — facts which, the prime minister claimed, totally undermined the legitimacy of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers.

US President Donald Trump has until May 12 to decide whether to pull the US out of that deal.

How Israel obtained Iran’s nuclear secrets - Sources reveal how Mossad agents smuggled half a ton of top-secret records from Iran’s nuclear program from Tehran to Israel.

According to a report Monday night by The New York Times which cited an anonymous Israeli senior official, the massive document haul was undertaken in a January 2017 operation he hailed as one of Israel’s “greatest achievements” in intelligence gathering.

Israel’s national intelligence agency, the Mossad, discovered the location of the Iranian nuclear weapons program’s secret file archive in Tehran in February 2016, the source told the Times, which Netanyahu revealed was located in the Shorabad district.

Last January, Mossad agents infiltrated the archive in an overnight operation, removing the half ton of material, and smuggled the files to Israel that very same night.

No details on the technical execution of the covert operation were provided.

Iranian officials were initially unaware the documents had been removed, learning of the infiltration only months later, Yediot Ahronot reported Tuesday morning.

Mossad chief Yossi Cohen later informed Donald Trump of the successful operation during a trip to Washington.

While Israel has been in possession of the documents since January 2017, Israeli officials refrained from disclosing the contents to the public until now, due in large part to the lengthy translation process for the 110,000 documents and extensive efforts to verify their authenticity.

Following Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed the authenticity of the materials furnished by Israel as proof of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

I can confirm with you, for you, that these documents are real, they are authentic,” said Pompeo.