(JTA) — Israel’s Mossad intelligence service broke into the anonymous Tehran building that housed Iran’s secret nuclear files and smuggled half a ton of documents and compact discs back to Israel the same night.

The New York Times in an article posted on its website Monday night quoted a senior Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity as saying that the Mossad discovered the warehouse in February 2016 and kept the building under surveillance since then.

Mossad operatives broke into the building in January, took the original documents, and returned to Israel the same night, the official told the Times.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

In his nationally televised broadcast, first in English, on Monday night, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the hiding place of the documents. “This is where they kept the atomic archives,” Netanyahu said. “Now, from the outside, this was an innocent looking compound. It looks like a dilapidated warehouse. But from the inside, it contained Iran’s secret atomic archives locked in massive files,” he said.

On stage with Netanyahu were shelves of binders and a moveable wall of CDs.

“And here’s what we got. Fifty-five thousand pages. Another 55,000 files on 183 CDs. Everything you’re about to see, is an exact copy of the original Iranian material,” he said, adding: “You may want to know where are the originals? Well, I can say they’re now in a very safe place.”

Netanyahu said during his presentation that the information had been shared with the United States and that “the United States can vouch for its authenticity.”

President Donald Trump is set to decide by the middle of next month whether it will remain in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is known.

In a meeting with reporters shortly after Netanyahu’s presentation, Trump said that the disclosure “showed that I was 100% right” in criticizing the Iran nuclear deal. He declined to say what he would decide on the Iran nuclear deal.

“The United States is aware of the information just released by Israel and continues to examine it carefully,” the U.S. Press Secretary said in a statement.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Make a Passover Gift Today!

$90 $180

$360

Other amount