New Delhi, Dec 3 (IANS): Israel's Mossad recruited a team of Iranian nuclear scientists to carry out a covert operation which blew up one of the regime's most secure nuclear facilities earlier this year, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
Up to 10 scientists were approached by Israeli agents and agreed to destroy the underground A1000 centrifuge hall at Natanz in April, though they believed that they were working for international dissident groups.
Some of the explosives they used were dropped into the compound by a drone and quietly collected by the scientists, while others were smuggled into the high security facility hidden in boxes of food on a catering lorry, the report said.
The ensuing destruction caused chaos in the highest echelons of the Iranian leadership. It demolished 90 per cent of the centrifuges at the nuclear plant, delaying progress towards a bomb and putting the key complex out of action for up to nine months, the report added.
The new details are among astonishing secrets of three connected Mossad operations that took place over an 11-month period of sabotage in Iran. The first two, in July 2020 and April 2021, targeted the complex in Natanz using explosives, while he third, in June this year, took the form of a quadcopter assault on the Iran Centrifuge Technology Company (TESA), in the city of Karaj, 30 miles northwest of Tehran, Jewish Chronicle reported.
Mossad spies hid explosives in building materials used to construct the Natanz centrifuge hall as long ago as 2019, then triggered them in 2020.
Agents sneaked an armed quadcopter, weighing the same as a motorbike, into Iran piece by piece, and used it to launch missiles at the TESA site in Karaj in June, the report said.
The three operations were planned together over an 18-month period by a team of 1,000 technicians, analysts and spies, as well as scores of agents on the ground.
The three-part assault on Iranian nuclear infrastructure was carried out by Mossad acting alone -- known in Israeli intelligence circles as a 'blue-and-white operation' -- and not jointly with the US, dubbed 'blue-white-and-red'.