The statements issued by former Israeli intelligence chief Yossi Cohen a few days ago were astounding and bewildering, as he revealed, in details, how Israel stole the Iranian nuclear archives on January 31, 2018, how it carried out explosive and sabotage attacks against the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility, and how it threatens Iranian nuclear scientists with assassination, hinting that, most recently, it was close to assassinating Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran in January of last year.
More astounding and bizarre was a statement issued from Iran itself, not from Israel. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not stop at discussing the theft of the nuclear archives and the explosions and assassinations; rather, he revealed that “the most senior anti-espionage official" was an Israeli spy.
Even more astounding than that were the official Iran comments on these dangerous matters. They were timid and not even free of contradictions, with Shahrokh Nazemi, the spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations, saying last Saturday that “Cohen’s comments reflected a long-running pattern of criminal sabotage against Tehran that includes the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Natanz over a decade ago.” He added that “threatening our nuclear scientists with death is madness that must not be tolerated.”
While Shahrokh Nazemi’s statements are a clear admission of what Israel had done, it was strange to see that Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi’s statements were contradictory. He said: “It is an extremely childish and ridiculous play.” Meanwhile, Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian negotiator, said that “Israel has fabricated evidence;” however, the New York Times had quoted an Israeli official as saying that Mossad agents had stormed an Iranian warehouse in which nuclear program archives were bring stored, took the original documents, and smuggled them to Israel that same night!
In the same context, Supreme Leader Khamenei advisor Momeen Rezai accused Israel of stealing the nuclear archive. Also, the Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, which reports directly to the Supreme Leader, Momeen Rezai added: “The country has been widely exposed to security violations and before that, the entire nuclear archive had been stolen, and some drones also came and carried out operations!”
What is perhaps more controversial are Ahmadinejad’s statements suggesting a high-level criminal cabal operating in Iran, that this cabal must explain its involvement in the assassination of nuclear scientists and the explosions in Natanz, and that they stole important documents in Turouzabad and the Space Agency.
“Was it merely a single paper to be pocketed before running away? Was it a truckload of documents? If so, how did they make it out of the country despite all the checkpoints? How did so many trucks loaded with documents leave the country?”
Ahmadinejad says that the news was concealed from all, except when the nuclear documents reached Israel and that the documents of the Space Agency were in the head of the organization’s cabinet. How, then, did they enter through the ceiling, open the safe, and take the documents?
Cohen had announced that Israeli agents were within proximity of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhri when he was assassinated. He added that in some cases, Israel is trying to dissuade Iranian scientists from participating in their country’s nuclear program by sending them messages to the effect that, “If this scientist is willing to change his profession and not harm Israel, he will not be targeted. Some understood this message, and others did not. It is an offer that cannot be refused.”
He revealed that twenty agents participated in the looting of the archive but did not reveal whether they were all Israelis.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not stop there but continued to threaten to reveal secrets he seemed to have acquired during his tenure at the Ministry of Security and Intelligence after the dismissal of Haider Moslehi on April 17, 2011.
In this context, Ahmadinejad continued to make these revelatory statements online, divulging that, during his term, Hassan Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, the director of the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran radio station, said that the brother-in-law of the leader Ali Khamenei planned to travel with his family to Israel via India, where his two-week stay was paid for by an Israeli company. However, Ahmadinejad claims he dismissed Bagherzadeh from the post he had held from 1998 to 2014 and prevented him from making the trip!
Perhaps more staggeringly, in an official admission made on Tuesday, when former Iranian Minister of Intelligence Ali Younesi admitted that the Israeli Mossad had infiltrated various strategic sectors in the country, stressing that the lives of officials were at stake as a result.
In an interview With the Iranian website Jamaran, Younesi warned that the country’s officials ought to watch for their lives, considering that the Mossad has penetrated various sectors. He said that the security services are chasing loyalists instead of identifying infiltrators, stressing that the new agencies created have weakened the work and performance of the Ministry of Intelligence.
It is known that Younesi was Minister of Intelligence in Mohammad Khatami’s government between 1997 and 2005 and that the website Jamaran is tied to Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the regime’s first supreme leader, who is affiliated with the reformists.
A few days ago, the New York Times reported that an attack targeted a facility near the city of Karaj, on the outskirts of Tehran, and that the target site was used to produce the centrifuges used in the Fordow and Natanz facilities. However, what is interesting is that the newspaper said the attack was carried out by a small, four-wheel-drive drone that took off from inside the country, at a time when Naftali Bennett, the Prime Minister of Israel, alluded to Israel’s role in the attack.
