Former Mossad Director Yossi Cohen disclosed Tuesday that Israeli intelligence operatives secretly entered Iran’s heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility on multiple occasions to gather firsthand intelligence, calling the later American strike on the site “the fulfillment of all my dreams.”
Speaking at the Galilee Conference, Cohen said Mossad agents repeatedly infiltrated the underground complex to gain a detailed understanding of its layout and capabilities. “We toured the nuclear site in Fordow, Iran, many times in order to understand the site,” Cohen said. Reflecting on the U.S. military operation that targeted the facility, he added that it was “the fulfillment of all my dreams.”
Cohen also sought to put Iran’s nuclear progress into perspective, arguing that while Tehran possesses uranium enriched to 60 percent, it has not yet reached weapons-grade capability. “Sixty percent enriched uranium is still far from a bomb,” he said.
Fordow is one of Iran’s two primary uranium enrichment plants, the other being Natanz. The installation sits approximately 30 kilometers northeast of Qom and was built deep inside the Zagros Mountains, buried roughly 90 meters beneath the surface and shielded by layers of solid rock.
Its underground design has long made Fordow one of the most difficult targets within Iran’s nuclear network and a significant obstacle for any military operation. The existence of the facility became public in 2009 after Western intelligence agencies had already uncovered it, placing it at the center of international scrutiny over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and later negotiations surrounding the 2015 nuclear agreement.
During the 2018 Mossad mission that captured Iran’s classified nuclear archive, Israeli intelligence also obtained detailed blueprints of the Fordow complex. In the years that followed, Iran increased enrichment activity at the site and installed more advanced centrifuges there.
On June 13, 2025, the Israeli Air Force targeted Fordow as part of a wider offensive against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Although the strike inflicted damage on the facility, it did not eliminate it.
Nine days later, the United States carried out a much larger attack against Fordow, as well as the nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan. The Fordow operation involved six B-2 stealth bombers that released 12 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-buster bombs, each weighing approximately 13.5 tons.
Gen. Dan Caine, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, later explained that the bunker-busting bombs entered the underground facility through two ventilation shafts. According to Caine, the first bombs blasted through thick layers of concrete that Iran had placed over the openings, allowing the remaining munitions to penetrate much deeper into the underground complex.
{Matzav.com}
