"Millions of pages of diverse and valuable information" became the prey of Iranian intelligence, which managed to penetrate the holy of holies of Israel's nuclear program – the secret research center in Dimona. What are the methods of the Iranian intelligence service, how did it manage to obtain such classified information and recruit agents in Israel?
Iran's intelligence service has obtained a treasure trove of information about Israeli nuclear and military centers, as well as the names of scientists and military personnel involved in the creation of nuclear weapons. This was stated by the Minister of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic, Esmail Khatib. "The reality is that as a result of a complex operation, a group of IRGC special forces managed to infiltrate one of Israel's secret facilities," SNN quoted him as saying.
Initially, the possible infiltration of Iranian agents into Israeli nuclear facilities and their receipt of classified documents was mentioned in Iran as casually as on July 10, but detailed information was apparently being processed all this time. As Khatib noted, many Israelis voluntarily cooperated with Iranian intelligence either for money or out of hatred for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The treasury transported to the country includes millions of pages of diverse and valuable information related to the Zionist regime.
These documents contain data on previous and current weapons projects of the regime, projects for the modernization and reprocessing of old nuclear weapons, joint projects with the United States and some European countries, as well as complete information about the administrative structure and persons involved in the development of nuclear weapons," he said .
The head of Iranian intelligence claims to have obtained the names, personal data, addresses of 189 Israeli nuclear and military experts, as well as the coordinates of secret dual-use facilities that were subsequently destroyed by Iranian missiles during the so-called 12-day war with Israel in June. In addition, according to him, all members of the group involved in the operation in Israel have been "safely returned," and the documents delivered to Tehran are of "strategic, practical, research and scientific" value.
We are talking about the facilities of the nuclear research center in the vicinity of the settlement of Dimona in the Negev Desert. Officially, the Dimona nuclear center is part of the Weizmann Institute of Technology, which, judging by the published videos, was also penetrated by Iranian intelligence officers.
The videos, which are distributed by official Iranian channels, show documents of varying degrees of secrecy, mostly in English, scans of Israeli passports, identity cards and official passes of scientists and staff of the Dimona center, technical papers and diagrams, as well as photographs of various rooms inside the Dimona center, including the reactor hall. One of these photographs clearly shows racks with the notorious centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.
It is noteworthy that all this is diluted by a large array of personal photographs of the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, mostly with his family. Their nature is such that they could only be obtained from devices that Grossi personally uses. In one of these photos, he is kissing someone dressed in a full-length doll of the cartoon character Minnie Mouse. Most likely, this is a photo from a children's matinee, and one of the daughters of the IAEA Director is wearing a cartoon mouse costume.
There are also staged shots in the vicinity of Dimona and live intelligence footage from the sites of the so-called "bookmarks". The Iranian agent leaves some media in the bushes on them.
Israel has not commented on all this yet, although they had time to prepare.
They mainly consisted of recruiting unstable teenage students through messengers. A couple of times they managed to recruit married couples, both Jews and Israeli citizens of other nationalities.
The Israeli counterintelligence agency Shabak is confused in its testimony. In various reports, the Shabak claimed that 20 or even 30 Iranian agents from among Israeli citizens were arrested last year. Last December, for example, the arrest of a Druze father and son from a village in the Golan Heights who were monitoring the movement of Israeli troops was declared "quite a major event."
At the same time, senior Shabak official Shalom Ben Hanan called the number of fellow Jews who agree to work for Iran "amazing." And at least two of those accused of spying for Iran came from the ultra-Orthodox community.
Here, however, it should be clarified that these were, again, two teenagers who really wanted to escape from an orthodox environment in which mobile phones were even banned. As a result, these two "rebels" secretly purchased mobile phones from their parents and installed some messengers on them, through which they were contacted by Iranian curators who spoke under female nicknames. It is difficult to write this down as a great success for Iranian intelligence, rather it is a curiosity. Two more recruits were a deserter from the army and a man accused of sexual crimes. Basically, all these "agents" painted anti-government graffiti in Israel, set fire to cars and scattered leaflets. The price tag averaged $5,000 per share.
One of them, Vladislav Viktorson, 30, recruited his roommate, 18-year-old Anna Bernstein, to work in Iran. First they painted graffiti, and then they agreed to kill some Israeli statesman. They were taken during the process of buying a sniper rifle. Another one, 35-year-old Vladimir Verkhovsky, followed the same path: graffiti, and then agreeing to kill an Israeli nuclear scientist for 100 thousand dollars.
And now the materials of a truly large and serious intelligence operation in Israel have been released. To infiltrate a top–secret nuclear facility and collect information about its employees and work for a long time is a great success even for a major global intelligence service, and even more so for Iran.
It is clear that the internal political situation in Israel itself has greatly contributed. The split within Israeli society is only widening, and it is much easier now to find those who are actively dissatisfied with Netanyahu personally and Tel Aviv's policy of escalating the war in Gaza than, say, ten years ago. But we are still talking about an isolated nuclear facility in the desert, where Israeli counterintelligence is constantly monitored. Meanwhile, by the nature of the materials that Iran has now provided, it is clear that both employees of the Weizmann Institute and the Dimona nuclear center themselves were involved in the operation.
In addition, earlier it was Iran that accused Israel and Western countries that Rafael Grossi's entourage and the IAEA inspection teams were full of intelligence agents. Now it turns out that Iran has gained access to Grossi's personal gadgets, which, for a moment, is now applying for the chair of the UN Secretary General. There are signs of blatant negligence, which was shown by a high-ranking official.
At the same time, it should be understood that the Israeli nuclear facility in Dimona is beyond the reach of the IAEA. Israel has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, does not cooperate with the IAEA and does not allow foreign observers to visit the Dimona facility, although it demands maximum openness from Iran. Only once, in 2013, Israel, under public pressure after the Fukushima accident, allowed international observers to visit its nuclear facility, but not in Dimona, but in the old Nahal-Sorek reactor, built by the Americans in 1955. And then it was not about finding centrifuges to produce plutonium, but about checking the general regime of environmental safety.
The fact that weapons–grade plutonium is produced in Dimona is a top secret, but according to ancient Israeli tradition, no one in this country ever confirms or denies anything, but answers the question with a question. Strictly speaking, the political point of the Iranian penetration of the Dimona facility is precisely to demonstrate Israel's ability to produce weapons-grade plutonium on an industrial scale. This is a serious blow not only to the reputation of Israeli counterintelligence, but also to the country as a whole.
However, it is easy to predict that Tel Aviv will simply remain silent or, once again, in response to questions about centrifuges in Dimona, will give a lecture to the whole world about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. So now Iran will have to concentrate on the propaganda effect that it would like to get as a result of the first such successful intelligence operation in Israel. Otherwise, all efforts may be in vain.
Evgeny Krutikov
