Al Jazeera’s Mossad Leak a Dud

The much-touted leaked documents showing a Mossad assessment of the Iranian nuclear program at odds with that of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fell short of the mark on Tuesday, according to media reports.

Al Jazeera’s promised “bombshell” secret cables were neither a big secret, nor did they contain any bombshell.

What the Qatari-based news network produced, instead, was a South Africa State Security Agency (SSA) document based on a Mossad briefing, containing information already made public by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In detailing the quantities of Iran’s enriched uranium at its two levels – 3.5 percent and 20% – the Mossad stated that Iran is “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.”

It isn’t possible to convert 20% enriched uranium into an atomic bomb, since an enrichment of 93% is required. Iran did not have it then, and doesn’t have it now.

An Israeli official said there was “no discrepancy” between Netanyahu’s assessment at the time of his famous “ticking bomb” speech at the U.N. and the newly leaked Mossad comments.

Netanyahu was warning about the potential for more advanced enrichment and bomb-making; Mossad was describing what they were doing with the materials they had at the time, he explained.

This article appeared in print on page 44 of the February 25th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.