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NYT reveals how Israel stole Iran’s nuclear secrets

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The New York Times has published details of how the Mossad stole Iran’s nuclear secrets from the centre of Tehran.

In April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled stolen documents that contained “new and conclusive proof of the secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community”.

An article in the New York Times written by David Sanger and Ronen Bregman provided details of the operation. Mossad agents disabled alarms, broke through two doors, cut open dozens of giant safes and escaped from Tehran with half a tonne of secret documents.

Less than 24 agents took part in the break-in. The agents arrived at 22:30 on 31 January and had to escape by 05:00  as the morning shift of Iranian guards arrived at 07:00.

The warehouse they broke into began to be used after the 2015 Join Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear accord was agreed with the US, France, UK, Germany, Russia and China. The Mossad was documenting the collection effort, filming the moves for two years, since the relocation began in February 2016 and learned which of the 32 safes held the most important information.

They also studied the workings of the alarm system, so that it would appear to be working but not alert anyone while the agents entered the premises. They then had to burn through 32 Iranian-made safes, taking 50,000 pages and 163 compact discs of memos, videos and plans.

Fearing that some of them would be caught, the Israelis removed the materials on several different routes.

David Albright, a former inspector who runs the Institute for Science and International Security, said in an interview that the documents contained “great information”. Last month he told the US Congress that “Iran conducted many more high-explosive tests related to nuclear weapons development than previously known”.