In a rare television appearance, the outgoing head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency has signaled his country’s role in disrupting Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program. Israel may have played a role in a series of attacks on clandestine Iranian nuclear cites and elimination of the regime’s key WMD experts, Yossi Cohen, who retired as director of the Mossad last week, suggested.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 TV network on Thursday, the ex-Mossad detailed the country’s ability to hit at the heart of Iran’s highly-secured nuclear weapons infrastructure. The Mossad surveillance had top Iranian nuclear experts in its crosshairs, including Islamic Guard (IRGC) general and “father of Iranian nuclear bomb,” Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the spy chief said. In November 2020, Fakhrizadeh was eliminated in a roadside ambush, dealing a serious blow to the Iranian nuclear ambitions.
The retiring intelligence chief showed intimate knowledge of Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. In April, an explosion destroyed Iran’s advanced nuclear centrifuges deployed for enriching weapons-grade uranium. The strike “crippled” the regime’s top nuclear enrichment site, media reports confirmed.
Israel did not take responsibility for any of those attacks or strikes.
The Times of Israel published the excerpts from the interview:
Yossi Cohen, who retired as head of the Mossad last week, provided highly specific details of recent Mossad activity against Iran, his interactions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his role in Israel’s normalization with the UAE, and his own undercover career in an extraordinary interview on Israeli television broadcast on Thursday night.Cohen intimated that his agency blew up Iran’s underground centrifuge facility at Natanz, gave a precise description of the 2018 operation in which the Mossad stole Iran’s nuclear archive from safes in a Tehran warehouse, confirmed that Iran’s assassinated top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh had been in Mossad’s sights for years, and said the regime needs to understand that Israel means what it says when it vows to prevent Iran attaining nuclear weapons. (…)The interview was presumably approved by Israel’s military censors, and Cohen was circumspect on numerous occasions, but nonetheless talked about his career, philosophy, and key operations with an openness and detail radically atypical of spy chiefs, especially those whose service has only recently ended.Early in the more than an hour of conversations for journalist Ilan Dayan’s “Uvda” (Fact) documentary show on Israel’s Channel 12, Cohen indicated that he was deeply familiar with Iran’s various nuclear sites, and said that, if given the opportunity, he would take Dayan to the underground “celler” at Natanz, where, he said, “the centrifuges used to spin.” (…)Regarding Fakhrizadeh, identified by Israel as the father of Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program, who was killed in an ambush near Tehran in November 2020 that has been widely attributed to Israel, Cohen said that he was watched by Mossad for years and that the Mossad was physically close to him before November 2020.Fakhrizadeh “most troubled us from the point of view of the science, the knowledge, the scientists of the Iranian military nuclear program,” said Cohen, and therefore “he was a target for [intelligence] gathering for many years.”
The revelations come as President Joe Biden’s makes significant concessions to the Iranian regime in hopes of restoring the Obama-era nuclear deal. This week, the Biden administration House repealed some Trump-era sanctions on Iran’s energy sector. The Biden White House has already rescinded United Nations sanctions and arms embargo on terror-sponsoring Shia-Islamic regime, overturning former President Donald Trump’s executive order.
Cohen admitted that it was mistake to allow the Gulf Arab country of Qatar to send huge amounts of money into Gaza, which instead of upgrading civilian infrastructure ended up in the coffers of Hamas.
The Jerusalem Post reported the ex-Mossad chief’s regret:
“I made a mistake in transferring Qatari money to the Gaza Strip,” Cohen said. He changed his mind following the recent flare-up in hostilities between Hamas and Israel in May.”I admit that I wholeheartedly believed that the people of the Gaza Strip would get used to a little more comfort that would greatly improve their civilian system, [and] not be used for military purposes. I thought their lives would be better and motivations for crises and wars diminished. And I was probably wrong. I was wrong,” Cohen admitted.
Qatar has transferred around 1.4 billion in “aid” to Gaza since 2012 and pledged another $500 million following the recent conflict triggered by Hamas’s rocket attacks into Israel. The Biden administration has announced $110 million additional funding to Gaza.
In recent weeks, the former intelligence chief had stressed the need to keep up the pressure on Iran as it pursues a rogue nuclear weapons program. The warning comes as Israel is most likely to have a new government on Sunday, ending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12 years at the helm of the country.
“Activity against the Iranian regime must be stepped up so that it understands that crossing lines will cost it immense damage,” Cohen said last month. “[Israel must] fight it and its actions to the bitter end, until it understands that whenever it crosses a line, it will suffer enormous damage,” he added.
“Netanyahu says will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons”
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