17 Apr 2021; MEMO: A senior Iranian official has admitted that Israel stole the archive of his country's nuclear programme in an alleged Mossad operation carried out in 2018, Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday.
Momeen Rezaei, advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Iran's Mehr News Agency on Wednesday that the country needs a major revamp of its security.
"The country has been widely exposed to security violations, and the example is that in less than a year, three security incidents have occurred: two explosions and one assassination," explained Rezaei.
He added: "Before this, documents from our entire nuclear [archive] have been stolen, and before that, a few suspicious drones came and did some work."
When Mossad smuggled the nuclear archive out of Iran in 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the alleged evidence that Iran aimed to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran denied this.
Iran nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi called Netanyahu's claims at the time: "A very childish and even a ridiculous play."
Mohammad Marandi, one of Iran's negotiators in the 2015 nuclear deal, stated that Israel had "fabricated evidence".
Rezaei expressed that this week's attack on Natanz was "a bad event in terms of prestige" and that "they did it to break our resistance in diplomacy."
