Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear program at the defense ministry in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2018. Netanyahu said that he had proof of a “secret” Iranian nuclear weapons program. AFP
JERUSALEM — New details have been leaked of how the Israeli spy agency Mossad smuggled out Iranian nuclear documents earlier this year, but the material does not appear to provide evidence that Iran failed to abide by its 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers.
The information reported Sunday shed more light on the daring Mossad operation but offered few other details beyond what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in April, when he unveiled what he said was a trove of secret Iranian nuclear documents dating back to 2003 seized by Israeli intelligence.
The Israeli leader argued that the 55,000 pages of documents and 183 CDs of the Iranian program dubbed “Project Amad” provided more reason for President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal with world powers.
Iran maintains the entire document trove is fraudulent
The New York Times reported Sunday that Israeli agents had six hours and 29 minutes to break into the nondescript nuclear facility in a commercial district of the Iranian capital, Tehran, before the guards arrived in the morning. In that time, they infiltrated the facility, disabled alarms and cut through safes to remove the secret documents before leaving undetected.
It said certain documents appeared to demonstrate that Iran had worked to “systematically assemble everything it needed to produce atomic weapons,” but noted that exculpatory information could have been left out of the hand-picked documents shown to its reporter.
The Washington Post reported that Iran “was as on the cusp of mastering key bomb-making technologies” when the program ended last decade.
The Associated Press was not provided access to the new details of the Mossad operation.
There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office. /cbb