DUBAI: The outgoing chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service has offered the closest acknowledgment yet his country was behind recent attacks targeting Iran’s nuclear programme and a military scientist.The comments by Yossi Cohen, speaking to Israel’s Channel 12 investigative programme aired on Thursday, offered an extraordinary debriefing by the head of the typically secretive agency.
In July 2020, an explosion tore apart Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility’s advanced centrifuge assembly, which Tehran later blamed on Israel.
Then in April of this year, another blast tore apart one of its underground enrichment halls.
Discussing Natanz, the interviewer asked Cohen where he’d take them if they could travel there, he said “to the cellar” where “the centrifuges used to spin”.
“It doesn’t look like it used to look,” he added.
Cohen did not directly claim the attacks, but his specificity offered the closest acknowledgement yet of an Israeli hand in the attacks.
The interviewer, journalist Ilana Dayan, also seemingly offered a detailed description in a voiceover of how Israel snuck the explosives into Natanz.
“The man who was responsible for these explosions, it becomes clear, made sure to supply to the Iranians the marble foundation on which the centrifuges are placed,” Dayan said.
“As they install this foundation within the Natanz facility, they have no idea that it already includes an enormous amount of explosives.” They also discussed the November killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist who began Tehran’s military nuclear programme decades ago.
While Cohen on camera doesn’t claim the killing, Dayan in the segment described Cohen as having “personally signed off on the entire campaign.” Dayan also described how a remotely operated machine gun fixed to a pickup truck killed Fakhrizadeh and later self-destructed.
Iran’s mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
AP