Ex-Mossad chief hints at Israeli involvement in attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities

i24NEWS

June 11, 2021, 03:50 AMlatest revision June 11, 2021, 03:52 AM

 2 min read

Yossi Cohen, who recently ended his five-year tenure as head of Mossad (Israel’s Intelligence Service), has signaled that Israel was behind efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear program including blowing up the underground centrifuge facility at Natanz and assassinating top scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

The interview aired Thursday night on Israel’s Channel 12 investigative program “Uvda.”

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A fire and explosion in July 2020 hit the Natanz uranium enrichment center that Iran blamed on sabotage. In April of this year another bomb blast went off at Natanz, damaging thousands of centrifuges.

Cohen discussed the November 2020 killing of Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist who began Tehran’s military nuclear program decades ago, while warning that other Iranian scientists involved in the country’s nuclear program could also become the target of assassinations.

“If the scientist is willing to change career and will not hurt us anymore, than yes, sometimes we offer them” a way out, Cohen said.

Cohen also described the 2018 Mossad operation that stole archival documents of Iran’s nuclear program from a Tehran warehouse.

The Mossad agents, 20 in total, none Israeli, carried out the operation by seizing material from 32 safes and scanning and sending most of the documents back to Israel with Cohen confirming that they had received a large portion of the documents before they were physically smuggled out of Iran.