TARGET TEHRAN - The inside story: How Mossad agents stole Iran’s nuclear crown jewels in 2018

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decides whether to attack Iran – and specifically whether to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities – ALL ISRAEL NEWS Editor-in-Chief Joel Rosenberg took a look back at one of his most daring actions against the ayatollah regime to date.

Six years ago, Netanyahu ordered Israel’s legendary spy agency Mossad to steal Iran’s entire nuclear weapons plans right out from under the regime’s nose. 

The drama unfolded on the night of Jan. 31, 2018. Former Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen was personally managing the high-risk operation from the agency’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. He was watching a live feed from two dozen agents on the ground in the Shorabad District of southern Tehran, the Iranian capital. They successfully broke into the regime’s top secret nuclear archives, retrieved 100,000 files and computer records, loaded them onto trucks and brought the invaluable trove with them to Israel. 

A few months later, these findings have forever changed the way the United States and other key global players would look at Iran. Then-U.S. President Donald Trump received the ‘smoking gun’ evidence from Israel that led him to withdraw from the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  

How did the Mossad pull off the sophisticated heist?

The inside story was revealed for the first time on American television this week, in the latest episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT on TBN.

Rosenberg held an exclusive series of interviews with top 'in-the-know' figures, among them two former Israeli prime ministers, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and the authors of "Target Tehran – How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination – and Secret Diplomacy – to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East," Yonah Bob and Ilan Evyatar. 

“It was the best heist by an intelligence agency in modern history because they got the physical files. This wasn't just ‘Mission Impossible’ with a thumb drive. They got truckloads of the physical files, and they brought those physical files back to Israel. That was part of what was remarkable,’ Yonah Bob told Rosenberg.  

“How did the Mossad discover that Iran was keeping a secret nuclear archive in a specific location?” Rosenberg asked. 

Bob revealed that it all began with a special request by Netanyahu, based on conversations he had held with top confidential Israeli and U.S. sources, including from the Mossad and the CIA. 

“Yossi Cohen, who was the director of the Mossad, had a meeting in early 2016 with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Bob noted. “Netanyahu said, ‘I want you to find a smoking gun. We need to change this dynamic. We know that Iran is still working towards a nuclear weapon. We know that they covered things up. But we need to make evidence that the Trump administration, that the IAEA, that the world will not be able to ignore.’”

Around the same time, the Iranian regime had decided to move its nuclear archives with the thought of storing them where the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) would not stumble upon them while visiting sites prone to routine inspections. 

“I would take my hat off to the Iranians. I think they had a good plan,” Bob admitted. “Ironically, even though it should have made it easier for the Iranians to protect and hide it by moving it into this one central spot, in the end, it made it easier for the Mossad to get everything at once because everything was in one spot.”

Yet nothing about this operation was ‘easy.’ It involved lots of planning, training and an absolutely perfect execution. Breaking into the nondescript warehouse in the Tehran suburb required using cyber capabilities to hack the video surveillance system and the alarms. Once inside, Mossad agents also had to break into very thick safes to get the Iranian secrets. 

“They knew that in order to get into those safes, they needed blowtorches to get up to 3,600 degrees. They had tested this. They had bought copies of the safes in a third country and tested it to figure out exactly how long it would take, how hot they needed to get,” Bob said. 

Overall, Mossad agents spent 6 hours and 29 minutes at the Iranian nuclear archive in the Tehran suburbs. “That is mind-blowing to me,” he added.

Netanyahu revealed Iran’s nuclear crown jewels

On April 30, 2018, Netanyahu presented the findings to the world in a press conference that included a memorable slideshow. 

The prime minister's main message was: “The Iran deal, the nuclear deal, is based on lies. It’s based on Iranian lies and Iranian deception. 100,000 files right here prove that they lied.” 

Netanyahu said: “Here’s what the files included: incriminating documents, incriminating charts, incriminating presentations, incriminating blueprints, incriminating photos, incriminating videos and more. We’ve shared this material with the United States, and the United States can vouch for its authenticity. We will also share it with other countries, and we’ll share it with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Yet, the authors of "Target Tehran" stressed that, at the time, not everyone in Israel was happy with the decision to make the Mossad heist public knowledge. 

“I can tell you, in fact, every single former Mossad chief was furious with Yossi Cohen and Prime Minister Netanyahu that they disclosed the operation,” Bob told Rosenberg.

“According to them, they should have given the information to the CIA, to MI6 in England, to the IAEA nuclear inspectors, but not to the world. I think Netanyahu and Cohen are very happy that they made the disclosure because of the strategic impact it had on how the world viewed Iran.” 

Ilan Evyatar provided further explanation: “Netanyahu has a reputation for caution, especially in the wake of the failed attempt to assassinate Khaled Mashaal. And Yossi Cohen has a reputation for daring. But one thing the two agreed on is the need to use intelligence as a tool of diplomacy because they both really wanted to push the United States out of the JCPOA, which had been signed in 2015.”

Both Evyatar and Bob see Cohen as a “unique figure” in Mossad history for a couple of reasons. 

“The leaders of Israel's security establishment always came from the secular kibbutz urban population. And Yossi Cohen is originally religious. He grew up in Jerusalem. He went to Yeshiva High School. He has that sort of more right-leaning background,” Evyatar described. 

Bob added: “To this day, he is much more religious than any of the other prior Mossad chiefs, and that impacted the way that he views the world, that impacted the way that he understands the Iranians.” 

Cohen and Netanyahu were determined to show the world that Iran was lying about its nuclear program – not with a ‘maybe’ but with solid proof that undermines the basic foundations of the nuclear deal signed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama and five other global powers in 2015.

And it worked. The IAEA could not have ignored that information and Trump pulled out of the JCPOA very quickly, specifically citing the Mossad's discoveries as the basis for his decision. 

Mike Pompeo: We're safer as a result of Trump’s decision

Trump’s former secretary of state and ex-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, told Rosenberg that the Mossad operation in 2018 was “intelligence collection at its finest.”

Pompeo, who visited Israel a few months ago to witness the remnants of the Oct. 7 atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists, said the secret Iranian documents proved there were “ongoing and continuing efforts to build out their program within weeks.”

Regarding the JCPOA, Pompeo added: “All of the elements of a full-scale nuclear weapons program, including its delivery components, weren't stopped by that deal. And so, I thought it was a mistake for the United States to be a part of it. I was proud to see President Trump make that bold decision in the spring of 2018 to get out of the deal. And I am confident that Israel and America, we're safer as a result of that decision.”

The former state secretary argued that in order to deter the Iranian regime, their decision-making process has to be altered.

“You have to convince them that the cost of mayhem and chaos and terror exceeds the benefits,” he told Rosenberg. “That's what we worked on in the Trump administration. Our core element was to deny them the capacity. We had them down to less than $5 billion in foreign exchange reserves. They now have, I think I've seen numbers as high as $18 billion or $20 billion. They are a wealthy nation compared to where they were just three years ago. And we can see where that money flows. We can see that money flowing to terror all across the world.”

Watch "TARGET TEHRAN" – The inside story on the TBN website. 

THE ROSENBERG REPORT airs Thursday nights at 9 p.m. EST and Saturday nights at 9:30 p.m. EST – on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the most-watched Christian television network in the United States.