The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday that the information Iran claimed it seized regarding Israel’s nuclear program “seems to refer” to the country’s Soreq Nuclear Research Center, the first acknowledgment outside of Tehran of the theft.
The Prime Minister’s Office had no immediate response to the remarks by IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who spoke during a news conference in Vienna.
The alleged theft comes at a time of renewed tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, which enriches uranium a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels and looks poised to reject a US proposal over a possible deal on its atomic program.
“We have seen some reports in the press. We haven’t had any official communication about this,” Grossi told reporters. “In any case, this seems to refer to Soreq, which is a research facility which we inspect by the way. We don’t inspect other strategic parts of the program, but this part of the program we do inspect.”
He did not elaborate on where he received his information, though the IAEA maintains a confidential reporting system for nations to report security incidents involving their nuclear programs.
Soreq, located 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Tel Aviv, is a national laboratory for nuclear science established in Israel in 1958, engaged in nuclear science, radiation safety and applied physics.
The IAEA has so-called item-specific safeguards agreements with Israel, Pakistan and India, all countries that are not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Under Israel’s agreement, the IAEA monitors Soreq but has no access to Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona, believed to provide the fuel for the country’s undeclared nuclear weapons program.
Over the weekend, Iranian state television and later the country’s intelligence minister claimed without offering evidence that Tehran seized an “important treasury” of information regarding Israel’s nuclear program.
Israel, whose undeclared atomic weapons program makes it the only country in the Mideast with nuclear bombs, has not acknowledged any such Iranian operation targeting it.
According to Tasnim, a semi-official Iranian media outlet closely affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the intelligence was gathered and transferred by Roy Mizrahi and Almog Atias, two Israelis arrested by Israeli police in May on suspicion of collecting intelligence on behalf of Iran.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib claimed thousands of pages of documents had been obtained and would be made public soon. Among them were documents related to the US, Europe and other countries, which, he claimed, had been obtained through “infiltration” and “access to the sources.”
