New details on stolen Iranian nuclear documents obtained by Israeli spies earlier this year shed light on Tehran's nuclear ambitions and show that Iran more than two decades ago had assembled the materials it needed to produce a nuclear bomb, according to multiple media reports.
The details expanded on those provided by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provided in April, first in a private briefing with
President Trump and
later in an open presentation.
The information came from a trove of documents stolen from a storage facility in Tehran by agents for the Israeli by agency Mossad. Journalists for
The New York Times,
the Washington Post and others were invited by the Israeli government to view key documents obtained in the raid.
The documents provide details on Project Amad – the code name for Iran's nuclear weapons development. That project was ordered halted in 2003, and no information provided shows that the Iranians had violated the 2015 deal with five other countries, including the U.S., to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Trump withdrew from that deal in May, days after Netanyahu had presented the stolen nuclear plans as evidence that Tehran was lying about its efforts to develop a nuclear weapon.
Iran had previously insisted that its nuclear endeavors were peaceful in nature, intended for energy and medical purposes – not to build a bomb.
But details from the stolen documents presented to reporters show that Iranian officials had discussed how to divide the nuclear program into "overt" and "covert" elements. For example, one note from an Iranian physicist recommends concealing the country's work on neutrons, which spark the chain reaction necessary to create a nuclear explosion, the Times reported.
The documents also discuss uranium deuteride, a substance used in making the devices that set off a nuclear explosion, according to the Times.
How the Mossad agents made away with the Iranian documents reads like a spy thriller. According to reports in the Times and the Post, intelligence officials had learned that Iran had begun collecting its nuclear documents in a single storage facility.
