A (4:35)

And what was Daniel's Prophecy?

B (4:36)

The challenge was how to destroy these three sites, Natanz, Fordu and Isfahan, to do a military operation, physically destroy them, not cyber, not small quantities of explosives, but physically destroy the site. A military operation with no military. Basically what they came up with was to use all kinds of remote control vessels that would be carrying massive quantities of explosives, would be guided from afar and exploding the sites while doing all sorts of other operations in the perimeter, taking care of guards, taking care of air defenses, and do at least the vast majority of all of that from the mothership at headquarters in Tel Aviv, not far away from where I'm talking to you now. Sci fi.

A (5:30)

Meanwhile, Ronan, another fuse is lit. An effort to expose Iran's quote unquote, dismantled weapons group to undo the JCPOA. So what's that plan?

B (5:40)

So from 2003, there are basically three versions of what happened. The Iranians said there was no amad, there was no military project, we will never have a bomb. This is all Zionist lies. And therefore it was not disassembled. The Other understanding of the situation was an American one. So while the US intelligence community acknowledged the fact that Iran had a military nuclear project up to 2003 that got quite advanced, they thought Iran neglected that, that they Iran decided to leave it, fearing US invasion back in 2003. And there was the Israeli version of things that I think naturally was more alarmist. And the Israelis thought that disassembling Ahmad was just artificial, was just in order to put a disguise into what was actually happening. And that Ahmad changed his name. Now it's not called Ahmad, it's called Sapand. But it's dispersed all over Iran in small nucleus researches, all over the universities with one umbrella. There's the professor, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who is connecting all of them. He is the brain. And they are putting all the different teams of research to maintain scientific readiness. They are not racing to a bomb, but they are keeping their fitness. That in case the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, tell them you need to produce a bomb in the shortest time possible, they will be ready.

A (7:07)

So, Rene, at this point we should introduce two important characters, Mike Pompeo and Yossi Cohen.

B (7:14)

I think for the American audience, probably Mike Pompeo is not someone you need to introduce. I say a few words about Yossi Cohen because he's an important character in the history of Israeli intelligence, and not just because he was the first Mossad case officer that when recruited, was religious, had the Yamuka, had the Kippa. They used to call him Yossi Dossi. Dosi is like ultra religious and Yossi, it rhymes. But he did remarkably well in Musan. He was codenamed Kalan. They said that this guy can recruit a chair and make the chair talk. And he became very successful. He was the deputy chief of Mossad. Then he was the national security adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu. And in January 2016, he was named as chief of Mossad. And I think that Cohen wanted to see a Mossad in the footsteps of Mehr Dagan, Mossad with a dagger between the teeth. And I think that in his counterpart, once Pompeo came to the CIA and met with the chief of Mossad, this is close relations. They have tradition of cooperation between the organizations. Both of them, I think, found each other as very useful partners and later friends. And that friendship, at the end of the day, it had a quite strong imprint on how history was written in these years.

A (8:32)

Talk about the nuclear archive. It's around this point that the Mossad discovers the Iranian nuclear archive.

B (8:38)

So the Mossad was Looking for the smoking gun, a proof, something that they can vent, something that they can show the world. This is what Iran is doing. They are developing a bomb. They are not just for energy or for research purposes, investing so much in this nuclear infrastructure. They. They knew that when they disassembled Ahmad in 2003, they had a special project of how to hack the archive, map it so they know which document belongs where and stash it somewhere secretly. And it turned out that what the Iranians were doing, you know, there are two ways to guard an archive or guard the facilities or guard something that is precious to you. It's either you put this in the most secure place with guards all over and sirens and cameras and choppers flooding around, but then you also attract a lot of attention to it, because clearly there's something there that is precious to you, or you put this in somewhere remote that looks like, you know, industrial area of the worst kind of the most filthy, dirtiest kind. You use very few guards. You don't tell them what they guard. So they don't think that what they do is very important or very secretive. They don't share the secret, because they don't know the secret. And this is the path that the Iranians chose. And then in 2016, Mossad, through one electronic surveillance and one agent, an asset, they got the win. They got the beginning of this rope that if they follow, they found where the Iranians are keeping the nuclear secret archive. That is, first of all, it's their organizational and scientific memory. Very important for them. But also, each document in that archive is the smoking gun.

A (10:25)

And, Ronen, just to the extent that you can share with us, how did they actually discover the archive? Like, mechanically, operationally? How did they find it?

B (10:35)

So it was not enough, theoretically, that they would recruit one of the guards, because it was just a guard in many, many, many, many facilities controlled by the Ministry of Defense all over Iran. And the guy doesn't know. So you need to have some kind of interface with one of the people that are in the small circle of people that know where exactly they put the secret archive. So one of the few that were in the loop, he was in love with the woman. He was flirting with the woman. And over a phone call, he wanted to impress her to show that, you know, he's a big shot. So he said to her something that when this conversation was intercepted, that when hearing and understanding the context of this conversation, Mossad thought that maybe he knows the secret. They tailed him. They surveilled him. They followed him for Some time. And following him led them to the archive charge Lafam. So they found themselves in suburb of Tehran and they were following him to this warehouse. They have guards that are coming there every few hours, they have dogs around the site and they have surveillance cameras, CCTV that are connected to a remote control command room in Tehran. But it's very rare that they go in to steal, to physically steal something and take it out. Yossi Cohen thought that it could potentially be at the center, at the core of a world debate per the authenticity of the documents, because he figured out that once this is stolen, of course the Iranians would know that this is Mossad and they would say it's a forgery. So he decided they are going to take the originals.

A (12:27)

So let's go to early 2018, the actual this risky operation commences. So tell us the story of how they actually did it.

B (12:35)

So on a stormy night, 31st January 2018, after few delays, the mission was given a go. And the mission is to open 32 safes, collect from the safes, half a ton, 500 kilos of documents and discs, and do all of this getting in, break the safes, take the stuff, go out, run away in not a second, more than six hours and 29 minutes, which is the gap between one guard patrol and the next one. The alarm system of the facility and the cameras are connected to the HQ of the igc, the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran. So they need to hack the cameras and loop them, meaning they hack the cameras before they actually enter the site. And they're able to feed the camera like there's nothing happening.

A (13:28)

So they pre record footage and they just feed that into the surveillance video. So what the security system in Iran is seeing is incorrect footage.

B (13:37)

Exactly. Incorrect footage of basically nothing. Now they arrive to the scene, they know that at the scene they have dogs as part of the protection. Because Mossad already in the 60s, they came across this problem. Sometimes you need to break into a bank or a facility or even a house that have a dog and what do you do with the dog? That you don't want to kill the dog or to dose the dog, but you don't want the dog to bark or to beat you. So they have a system. They have a vet in Israel with security clearance and that vet is supplying them a urine of a female dog in heat. And they use the urine to distract the dog, lure them away and keep them quiet as long as the operation is going on. And I was told I didn't see it, but I'm told that it always works. They break into three locking system. So the gate to the site, massive steel doors. And then the facility inside the warehouse. And after entering the restricted area in the warehouse, they have these crates. They break in and in the crates they have their main challenge. 32 safes, very thick, six feet tall. They need to bring them as soon as possible. And this is something that cannot be done on site because clock is ticking. And so then let me just maybe take you a year backwards, early 2017, the beginning of the exercising and the planning. Something that I don't know how fans would take, but I have some news to give here. And the news are that the people who stole the Iranian nuclear archive, like the people who did much of the secret activities, secret operation of Mossad in Iran in the last 15 years, are not Jewish. These were Iranians that were recruited from Iran. Unlike regular agents. These are agents that are not just staying in place. They being asked to come to special camps of training, sometimes in Europe, sometimes in Africa. But they also trained to take what they call kinetic assignments on them. And they are deeply trusted by the Mossad handlers and Mossad command. And they were given the task to do the nuclear archive theft. And in order to do that, they had to rehearse. And so Mossad built a mock site in a safe and guarded facility in a European country that keeps very good relations with Israel and with Mossad. They even had dogs. And so they could do this again and again and again and rehearsing until reaching the level that the commanders and the agents felt safe, felt secure, that they can do this, go in, do this in the window of time and go back safely. And it took a year, it took a long time until they really perfected. Because again, you have one shots and 31st of January 2018, the agents break in. They know that the safes contain more material than they can carry. And they know that there are different grades of importance to them in order to make the separation on site, what to take and what not. And because the agents do not have the expertise on nuclear stuff and building of atomic bombs, they were carrying head cameras bomb broadcasting directly to Mossad headquarters. At Mossad headquarters they had professionals from the Israeli Atomic Energy Committee. And the expert back at headquarters said, open this page, open that page. And gradually they reached the conclusion of what exactly they need to carry. Fitting this into the boxes of 500 kilos, separating the loads into few different vehicles. In the vehicles, the load is disguised as some kind of a regular cargo of nothing. So it's a hidden box inside the box. And all of this they are able to finalize in six hours and leave even, I think, five minutes before the window closed. And the three vehicles taking a different direction. So the trucks take off something like 10 minutes after the guards are coming, regular patrol. Immediately when they come in, they see disaster and it's happening on their shift. They sound the alarm, they call Tehran. Tehran says, but everything is okay at your place. We see it in the cameras. But then shortly they figure out that the cameras are hacked, that this is not good, that someone was able to get into the facility, steal the crown jewels. And the IRGC Central Command in Tehran is calling for a manhunt. Throughout the country, 12,000 people, Basij Police and IRGC are called up to hunt the trucks. They don't even know who they are hunting. They put checkpoints to put some kind of surveillance over some suspected cars, maybe pick up some CCTV cameras from the way. But basically it's fruitless. They are using different ways. Some of them are going via land, some of them are going to the closest port where this is loaded and taken to another country, a Gulf country. And the two land routes, they have safe houses. They stop, they change cars, they change crates. The people change, the outfit, the cars, the boxes, everything change. I can only imagine the feeling that these agents had after such a remarkable success.

A (19:13)

So Ronan, of all the documents they retrieved in this operation, can you just give me some examples of they got, just so you can illustrate the extent to which this was the smoking gun that they were looking for.

B (19:26)

So here is a document, for example, that is basically a letter or an agreement between the Iranian Atomic Energy Committee and the Iranian Ministry of Defense. And this is an agreement that the committee transferred to the Ministry of Defense its mission, so its sort of authority to enrich uranium with centrifuges. And here's the interesting part. From 3% to over 90%. And the 3% enrichment can be used for many purposes, energy research and others. But the 90%, whoever enrich uranium to 90% and above has only one purpose and it is to produce a warhead, a nuclear bomb. So this by itself then document. This agreement by itself is a smoking gun proving that Iran was lying throughout the years pretending that it never had and doesn't have a nuclear military project. And by the way, that document is signed by the two parties. So the Atomic Energy Committee, the head of that committee is someone called Akhzadeh and the Minister of Defense, Ali Shamachani, both of the gentlemen are no longer with us. Akazadeh was killed in the previous round of war with Iran in June. And Ali Shahbahani, whose later job was the national security advisor for the Supreme Leader, he was the first person to be killed in the first strike on February 28, 2026. So the first strike of the current war.

A (21:02)

Yeah. Epic fury.

B (21:03)

Epic fury, yeah.

A (21:04)

Okay, so the Israeli government now has the smoking gun. How does Israel plan to use it?

B (21:10)

We are in February 2018, one year,

A (21:13)

a little over one year into Trump's first term.

B (21:16)

Yep. Now, Trump, during the elections, he promised that the first thing he does when entering office would be to step away from the Obama JCPOA that he despised and criticized strongly. Now, that didn't happen for whatever reason, and it seems that the president was somewhat hesitant. And at a certain point, there were people in Mossad and people around the prime minister who said, let's use the archive this evidence. Use that as the key to get President Trump over the line. But there was also a live debate, quite vibrant inside Mossad. Should Israel push Trump over the line? Is it good or bad for Israel that the United States would quit the jcpoa?

A (22:04)

That's it for our sneak peek today. If you want to catch the full episode, please subscribe to Inside. Call me back by following the link in the description or by going to ark media.org that's ark media.org your support is what allows us to do what we do here at arc Media. I hope to see you there. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin. A Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Wiener. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.