4 ms·
I'm guessing an Iranian. From articles I've read, it sounds like Mossad has a huge network of ethnic Iranian agents carrying out the ground work in Iran. This s
by pcbro141 6y ago
I'm guessing an Iranian. From articles I've read, it sounds like Mossad has a huge network of ethnic Iranian agents carrying out the ground work in Iran. This stuff is fascinating indeed.
Here's a good read for you: https://archive.ph/uG9Lu https://archive.ph/uG9Lu
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/us/politics/iran-israel-mossad-nuclear.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/us/politics/iran-israel-m...
How Israel, in Dark of Night, Torched Its Way to Iran’s Nuclear Secrets
> The Mossad agents moving in on a warehouse in a drab commercial district of Tehran knew exactly how much time they had to disable the alarms, break through two doors, cut through dozens of giant safes and get out of the city with a half-ton of secret materials: six hours and 29 minutes.
> The morning shift of Iranian guards would arrive around 7 a.m., a year of surveillance of the warehouse by the Israeli spy agency had revealed, and the agents were under orders to leave before 5 a.m. to have enough time to escape. Once the Iranian custodians arrived, it would be instantly clear that someone had stolen much of the country’s clandestine nuclear archive, documenting years of work on atomic weapons, warhead designs and production plans.
> The agents arrived that night, Jan. 31, with torches that burned at least 3,600 degrees, hot enough, as they knew from intelligence collected during the planning of the operation, to cut through the 32 Iranian-made safes. But they left many untouched, going first for the ones containing the black binders, which contained the most critical designs. When time was up, they fled for the border, hauling some 50,000 pages and 163 compact discs of memos, videos and plans.
...
> In most Mossad operations, spies aim to penetrate a facility and photograph or copy material without traces. But in this case, the Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, ordered that the material be stolen outright. That would drastically shorten the time that the agents — many, if not all, of them Iranians — spent inside the building.
(continued in the article)
- sillysaurusx 6y agoThanks so much! I was just reading https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-how-a-secret-dutch-mole-aided-the-us-israeli-stuxnet-cyber-attack-on-iran-160026018.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-how-a-secret-du... which says the same thing: an Iranian mole was crucial for Stuxnet, smuggling a USB stick into the airgapped facility. I wonder what the calculus is like on whether to be an Iranian mole. Either the Israelis were blackmailing them into cooperating, or they're offering some very lucrative rewards, or the Iranian is doing it for some other reason (e.g. personal beliefs, or maybe just "being a super{hero,villain} for fun".)
- pcbro141 6y agoI imagine a combo of all of those reasons would be effective in convincing them to become agents. Like "hey, you can work for us, and we'll exfiltrate you and your family anytime you want and give you a great retirement package...or you can risk ending up like one of those nuclear scientists..." and they probably target the non-hardliner people.
- whimsicalism 6y agoThe US, at least, is very good at cultivating a lot of HUMINT just by offering massive rewards &/or relocation+citizenship for your family.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]