Countdown. Part 2

Taken out of the book “Mossad: battles of the 21st century” by Peter Lukimson

Back in 1987 a secret meeting of Iranian, Pakistani representatives and two German scientists was held in Dubai, and an agreement was attained that Pakistan and the Germans would help Iran create its own nuclear weapons in exchange for decent sum of money. The main hope was pinned on the ‘father’ of Pakistani atomic bomb Dr Abd El-Kadir Khan, who managed to build a nuclear weapon based on uranium- 235 compound instead of traditional plutonium. The scientist recommended the same technology for Libyan and North Korean nuclear projects, and offered it to Iran as well.

Dr Abd El-Kadir Khan has regularly visited Iran for many years, Iran has bought a great number of equipment pieces, and still the Mossad and Western intelligence services paid no attention to it.

It can be partially explained by the fact that Iranian government learned from Iraq’s experience (when Israeli military destroyed the country’s nuclear reactor with airstrike) and constructed all its nuclear facilities deep underground. However, it still doesn’t explain this lack of attention: here we are facing the major failure of western intelligence of the 1990s.

First ones to notice their mistake were the US, however, this ‘revelation’ happened only after Pakistani nuclear scientist Iftikhar Khan Chordi defected to the US in 1998. The scientist told the CIA all about the Iranian nuclear program and named Pakistani physicists who participated in it. When he was asked what did Iran need the bomb for, he said: “Naturally, to strike Isael”.

However, the Americans were not planning on sharing this new information with their Israeli allies, and Israeli diplomats kept coming to Moscow to speak of the Busher reactor construction.  It lasted till 2002 when Iranian opposition organization MAC promulgated the data on underground constructions in Iran. Later, in 2004, Dr Iftikhar Khan Chordi himself gave an interview to Pakistani TV telling that he gave Iran all that was necessary to create an atomic bomb, and the countdown of this construction has already started.

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Israel had to face a whole new line of urgent tasks. First of all, it had to convince the world that Islam fundamentalism and its main stronghold – Iran – poses a threat to the whole Western civilization, not only to Israel. Of course, everyone agreed with it on words, but when push came to shove, nor Europe, not Russia were ready to enact economic sanctions against Iran to make it stop its nuclear program and couldn’t sanction Israel’s military strike against Iranian nuclear objects.

Diplomats and politicians had to work on this task while the Mossad and The Directorate of Military Intelligence had to create a spy network inside Iran to prevent it from finalizing its nuclear project. Israel succeeded in creating quite a wide spy web – from intelligence satellites to bugs - on a very short notice.

Offices, cars, private apartments of Iranian political and spiritual figures were listened in. The methods of tapping devices import into the country were quite resourceful: shipments of computers or cell phones from French businessman – who was in fact a Mossad agent, etc.

The bugs transmitted information to Israel where a whole army of interpreters listened to delicate details of Iranian military and political life.

Creating an actual agent network in Iran was harder, and the Mossad was the one to take up the task.

Since 2005 some kind of evil doom pursues Iranian military, nuclear scientists and facilities. In December of 2005 a military plane crashed and all its 94 passengers – high-ranking military officers – were killed. Another plane crashed in January, 2006, killing the Chief Commander of Iranian Land Forces and his staff and some other important military figures. In November, 2006 another plane accident kills 36 high-ranking Islam Revolution Guards. Only after that Teheran officially blames all these accidents on joint efforts of British, US and Israeli intelligence services.

However, according Mikhael Bar-Zoar and Nisim Mishal, who authored a book in Mossad’s operations, first joint operation of US and Israeli intelligence was held already in February, 2005, when a nuclear object near Iran’s Dialem was destroyed by an ‘unidentified’ military plane. Iran officially declared this to be an accident.

Finally, in April 2006 hundreds of Iranian military officers and top nuclear scientists gathered in principle nuclear object in Natnaz. A whole new cascade of centrifuges was to be launched. But instead a major explosion threw Iranian nuclear program several years back.

The investigation of the incident revealed that the facility’s equipment and the raw materials were of extremely low quality, even though they were purchased at high prices. Of course, the Mossad and its spy network could rightfully take credit for that.

In January, 2007 the history repeated itself and a new cascade of centrifuges was destroyed in explosion, even though this time the equipment was bought from a completely different company. This ‘completely different company’, however, was founded by the same people who sold Iran low-quality equipment before.
Also, the ‘Sunday Times’ suggested, that Mossad agents poisoned one of the leading Iranian nuclear scientists, the head of the Isfakhan center, professor Adrashir Husseinpur. According to official reports, his death was a tragic accident.

To be continued