TRIGGERnometry - How We Got Iran's Nuclear Secrets - Ex Mossad Director Yossi Cohen

00:00:00.700 You're very, very critical of the Israeli military when it comes to October 7th.

00:00:06.440 Correct.

00:00:06.900 What do you think were the key failings that caused that to happen?

00:00:10.360 Well, why have Israeli secret services not infiltrated Hamas? 0.91

00:00:14.260 Why isn't there a guy there going, hey, they're going to launch a f***ing attack?

00:00:18.640 Why didn't that happen?

00:00:20.460 Based on your intelligence, based on what you know, why does Iran want a nuclear bomb?

00:00:25.100 The biggest coup of your career as Director of Mossad, that we know about at least, was stealing Iran's nuclear secrets.

00:00:31.740 Yeah.

00:00:32.160 And we know exactly what's happening in this kind of world.

00:00:35.240 I think that they are hiding the filthiest secrets of Iran bringing it home. 1.00

00:00:41.500 We brought a lot of documents and disks, a lot of videos and hard disks, I mean, amazing stuff.

00:00:49.300 We'd be in surprise ourselves.

00:00:51.500 So what did you find?

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00:01:44.260 Yossi Khan, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:45.700 Thank you very much for having me.

00:01:46.940 You're the former director of Mossad.

00:01:48.740 Your book is called Sword of Freedom.

00:01:50.060 It's good to have you on the show.

00:01:51.220 Thank you very much.

00:01:51.980 For our audience who may be less familiar with the world of the secret service and so on, what is Mossad?

00:01:58.500 Well, Mossad is an intelligence service.

00:02:00.300 I mean, working outside of the state of Israel.

00:02:02.400 I mean, in comparison to the other organizations that you may know.

00:02:06.500 I mean, the MI6 in the British version of the James Bond, as we call it, or the CIA.

00:02:12.940 All right.

00:02:13.260 I mean, these are the equivalents of the Mossad.

00:02:16.420 Mossad is an intelligence organization, quite a big one.

00:02:19.540 I mean, in comparison with the others, I mean, the quantity of the people, I mean, the quality of the people is amazing.

00:02:25.240 And we operate outside of the state of Israel.

00:02:27.520 I mean, behind the enemy lines, as we call it.

00:02:29.440 I mean, we don't do anything inside the country.

00:02:32.180 Your foreign intelligence service.

00:02:33.920 Absolutely.

00:02:35.040 And can you explain the intelligence infrastructure of Israel?

00:02:38.940 There are other organizations that do other things, Shin Bet and others.

00:02:42.260 How does it work?

00:02:43.260 Who handles what?

00:02:44.120 Okay.

00:02:44.860 I mean, it's very, very easy to define.

00:02:47.980 Like, in the UK, I mean, there is the internal service.

00:02:52.240 I mean, which is the Shin Bet, the Shabak, as we call them today.

00:02:55.420 They do internally.

00:02:56.360 They do whatever is connected to our local security from within.

00:03:02.060 It is, like, terrorism, local terrorism, counter-espionage against others that are trying to spy inside the country, inside the state of Israel, security, physical security of, like, MPs, prime minister, and our embassies abroad.

00:03:19.740 I mean, all, like, official entities of the Israeli, of Israel as a state outside of the country.

00:03:25.360 This is the Shin Bet. 0.69

00:03:26.380 Beside all that, I mean, there are a few military bodies, intelligence military bodies that are working together, simultaneously with us, together with us.

00:03:37.180 The one which is very famous now, 8200, Shmoni Matai, we call it in Hebrew, very well-known one, working on signal intelligence.

00:03:46.840 This is a monster of signal intelligence.

00:03:50.840 I mean, they do what we have to do to intercept, to listen, to hack, sorry to say.

00:03:57.260 I mean, the enemy is playing for us.

00:04:00.760 And this is part of the military intelligence.

00:04:03.480 Of course, I mean, we all work together.

00:04:05.620 And the third one would be the military intelligence as a part of it, okay?

00:04:09.860 I mean, it's, like, above Shmoni Matai, I mean, the 8200, of course, the signal intelligence, but there is a kind of a military intelligence that is, like, seeing everything, reading everything, being involved in collecting materials from all of us, and somehow direct our missions, even Mossad's mission, abroad to their national needs.

00:04:33.120 So, it's, I mean, these are the main, I would say, three bodies.

00:04:38.220 8200, I've mentioned that separately because they're goods, and they're, I mean, they're very important, I mean, to our resilience, I believe, in the country.

00:04:48.180 And you mentioned military intelligence.

00:04:49.760 One of the things that really stands out in your book is you're very, very critical of the Israeli military when it comes to October 7th.

00:04:57.260 Correct.

00:04:58.360 What do you think were the key failings that caused that to happen?

00:05:02.440 Well, I think on the national level, I mean, when I was national security advisor, I mean, you have to realize that there is a country to guard, that there is a country to preserve, that there is a country to make sure that it will exist the next day, right?

00:05:16.020 I mean, and you do have, on a national level, you do have two lines of defense that has to be emphasized by us, Israelis.

00:05:24.620 The one, I mean, by the way, it applies to every other country, too.

00:05:28.200 Like, it's good to do that, the same thing, the same structure in all countries, UK and others.

00:05:35.060 The first line of defense is the intelligence line, which is the one that you don't see, which is the one that you don't see.

00:05:42.600 I mean, this intelligence line is all of us, as described before, are working to know what the enemy is playing for us.

00:05:51.880 What's his plans?

00:05:52.780 What does he have in his mind?

00:05:54.200 I mean, what does the Iranians, what do they want to do? 1.00

00:05:57.560 I mean, what are the plans of terror attacks?

00:06:00.780 I mean, that either Iranians or other terror activity or terror organization, I'm sorry, is our planning for us. 0.93

00:06:07.260 And this is something that has to be conducting by intelligence forces to make sure that we know every day, every morning, every time, every minute,

00:06:19.620 what are the enemy plans, i.e., enemy each one of them that I've mentioned before.

00:06:25.740 It could be Hezbollah, Iran, Syrians at the time, or Hamas.

00:06:32.420 This line, unfortunately, collapsed.

00:06:34.800 I mean, when I say collapsed, I don't say that we didn't have intelligence at all,

00:06:38.960 but we didn't have a significant, meaningful intelligence to tell us or to give us the alert that the enemy is about to come.

00:06:48.500 Why didn't you have that information?

00:06:50.780 Because I believe that we didn't invest enough in Gaza Strip.

00:06:54.380 I believe that for years, I mean, we're not there.

00:06:57.280 We're not physically there.

00:06:59.400 And it's worthwhile explaining a little bit.

00:07:00.880 I mean, when we have disengaged from Gaza, what we call the Hidnat Kuts in Hebrew,

00:07:05.960 we left the 365 square kilometers for the Gazian people themselves.

00:07:10.940 That was a one-sided decision made by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

00:07:16.940 I mean, I'm sure you remember the time.

00:07:19.460 And we have left Gaza Strip completely.

00:07:21.220 When you leave the territory, okay, you're losing part of your intelligence holding on the ground.

00:07:28.420 You see less people that you can recruit.

00:07:31.720 I mean, you engage with less Gazan people that can be recruited, or Hamas people, of course, that can be recruited.

00:07:37.080 And I think that we missed all that.

00:07:38.680 Okay, so the deterioration of the holding in Gaza was imminent.

00:07:46.540 And by the way, I saw it happening in 2014-15 when I was active as the National Security Advisor.

00:07:56.580 And I saw during one of our round of violence, as we call them, Tsuketan, Protective Edge,

00:08:05.280 that was the formal English version of that round of violence, that the level of intelligence is not high enough.

00:08:12.800 It's not good enough, unfortunately.

00:08:14.320 I realized that because I was, Mossad is not dealing with the Palestinian thing, right?

00:08:18.200 Abroad, yes.

00:08:19.020 But again, Gaza and Judea and Samaria, we do not. 0.96

00:08:22.220 I mean, we're not involved in that, since we are working behind the enemy lies abroad.

00:08:26.820 Problem is that Gaza behaves like it is abroad. 0.68

00:08:31.480 Gaza behaves like it is a foreign country. 0.96

00:08:34.100 I mean, you can't go with your either military forces.

00:08:37.720 You can't go with your Shabak, whatever, 4x4 armored vehicles. 0.95

00:08:42.640 You can't go arrest someone inside his house in Gaza strip cities, 0.98

00:08:48.940 which is super different than territories like others, other territories like Judea and Samaria,

00:08:55.660 or whatever, East Jerusalem, or even inside the country.

00:09:00.260 And that creates a kind of a gap in between what we knew and what they have planned.

00:09:06.640 And that gap actually created this disastrous activity, horrifying activity, in October 7th.

00:09:14.240 But I have alerted that.

00:09:17.600 When I returned to the Mossad in 2016, I offered, let's put it that way,

00:09:25.340 I volunteered and I offered my services to the country.

00:09:28.460 And I said, my perspective is that the Gaza level of intelligence is not sufficient, 1.00

00:09:35.060 it will never be sufficient if we will not participate in that.

00:09:38.540 Because we have the ability to work undercover, we have the ability to work differently

00:09:44.220 inside difficult territories like this one, like we do in Hezbollah and Iran and other places

00:09:50.480 that you have been, of course, aware of recently.

00:09:53.080 And for reasons that would be kept with them, I was rejected.

00:10:04.060 The Mossad was rejected, I mean, to intensively help in that intelligence war inside Gaza.

00:10:10.420 By the prime minister?

00:10:11.940 The prime minister didn't give the order to do that,

00:10:15.320 but I was rejected by my counterparts in military intelligence and Shabak altogether.

00:10:21.080 So, first line of defense has collapsed.

00:10:24.260 I mean, this is what has happened.

00:10:25.880 Meaning is that if you don't have the right alarm and we didn't have it, this is what's happening.

00:10:32.800 But did you know that, you know, you, Israel, did you not know they're building terror tunnels? 0.84

00:10:38.960 Did you not know they're stockpiling weapons?

00:10:41.300 Did you not know that they're training?

00:10:43.800 Did you not know that they're scoping out the defense barrier, etc.?

00:10:47.760 Did you not know any of this?

00:10:48.740 We did, but we didn't know enough.

00:10:51.140 I mean, to my understanding, we did.

00:10:52.940 And we knew that these things are happening.

00:10:56.420 And by the way, it's a very interesting question, because in 2014-15,

00:11:00.020 I mean, the major thing that we were worried about are the penetrative tunnels.

00:11:04.320 This is what we're looking for.

00:11:05.520 You were worried they'd dig under?

00:11:06.960 They dig under.

00:11:08.340 I mean, we knew that.

00:11:09.220 I mean, by the way, they kidnapped a soldier.

00:11:10.860 I mean, Gilachal at the time being, like, coming into our territory under the famous fence. 0.64

00:11:18.680 And we didn't know where they are.

00:11:21.000 Okay.

00:11:21.240 Imagine, it's a huge territory, by the way.

00:11:23.080 I mean, 365 square kilometers, six times more than whatever, Manhattan, the island.

00:11:28.420 Right?

00:11:28.920 Which is less than 60 square kilometers.

00:11:31.900 So it's a big territory.

00:11:32.940 Imagine all this, I mean, being, like, penetrated by under tunnels.

00:11:37.300 I mean, 1.2 meters wide and very, very, very long ones.

00:11:42.040 I mean, starting at the end of the world, I mean, close to the sea.

00:11:45.360 And, I mean, penetrating all the way down under the state of Israel.

00:11:47.880 We had to know that, and we did not.

00:11:50.740 That was the reason for us to crash, I think, part of the borderline in 2014 and 15 and ongoing.

00:12:00.560 So we knew all that.

00:12:01.720 And, by the way, there was another thing that I referred to, which is, should the state of

00:12:06.460 Israel be or not proactive, all right, to defeat our enemies? 0.91

00:12:11.300 And I found myself, I mean, often more, I would say, proactive than the others.

00:12:18.920 Not alone.

00:12:19.880 I mean, others from these organizations were cooperating beautifully with this kind of thesis

00:12:25.400 that says, rise and kill first, as we all believe in. 0.57

00:12:30.300 But at the same time, things that have happened, as to your description,

00:12:34.360 were not being eventually crushed or disrupted or disabled inside Gaza.

00:12:48.000 Because the thing, I believe, was to maintain the Gazan territory quiet. 0.83

00:12:57.680 It applies, by the way, the same for Iran.

00:13:01.040 It applies the way we have behaved in Israel with Hezbollah, too.

00:13:07.700 So that's why you don't see many operations happening in this kind of territories

00:13:12.600 beside Kalandistan operations, all right?

00:13:15.360 But you don't have the absolute ones unless we feel that there is a must-do

00:13:21.060 and we are conducting this kind of rounds in order to disrupt the enemy's capability.

00:13:27.500 So come back to October 7th, there was an intelligence failure that you've just described.

00:13:31.600 One of the other questions a lot of people have is why it took so long for the military response,

00:13:36.700 why it took so long for troops to get into the area where the enemy were.

00:13:40.400 I don't know.

00:13:41.580 I mean, this is a question I can't really answer.

00:13:44.380 I'm not part of the army.

00:13:45.260 I was never.

00:13:45.920 I mean, yeah, when I was 18.

00:13:47.740 But since then, not much.

00:13:49.680 I don't really know.

00:13:50.500 This is a very tough question that has to be answered, I believe, by the National Investigating Committee

00:13:58.840 that will have to be eventually formed, I mean, in a given time.

00:14:03.280 I mean, I think that we really need it right now.

00:14:06.800 Why hasn't it been formed so far?

00:14:08.160 I'm not sure yet.

00:14:09.740 I'm not sure yet.

00:14:10.400 I mean, there are many, many, many questions about that.

00:14:12.300 I know that most of the people of Israel, I mean, if you interviewed Israelis,

00:14:15.400 I mean, most of them would have told you that this is the actual thing to do.

00:14:21.140 And more than that, I believe that we need this committee to investigate what went wrong,

00:14:26.940 not who went wrong.

00:14:29.180 And it's a big difference.

00:14:30.080 I mean, I'm not looking, I mean, to hang people, you know, say,

00:14:32.540 he's the one to be blamed.

00:14:33.800 I mean, he is the one.

00:14:35.340 I mean, we know them, all right?

00:14:36.600 I mean, we know the generals.

00:14:38.240 We know that the people have been working, I mean, in different divisions

00:14:41.040 inside the different intelligence body and the army themselves.

00:14:44.080 I mean, part of them took responsibility on what they did, right?

00:14:49.160 They took open responsibility, like Chief of Stafford T. Levy and Chief of Shabak Ronen.

00:14:54.980 But they took responsibility.

00:14:56.140 And they said, we're responsible.

00:14:57.260 I mean, the failure is on us.

00:14:59.620 But the investigation committee, I mean, should investigate what went wrong.

00:15:02.560 Why is it that we didn't know enough?

00:15:04.200 For example, should we, in the coming future, look differently in Gaza,

00:15:08.560 given that the territory will be territory that we will have to be securing?

00:15:13.080 I mean, we'll have to make sure that the Ghazan people or the Ghazan Hamas, okay, 1.00

00:15:18.260 will not, if they will still be there, hopefully not.

00:15:21.240 But if they're still there, do we, we have to make sure that this is not happening again, right?

00:15:26.600 And more than that, I mean, I think that it needs maybe kind of a reform in our way of thinking.

00:15:31.540 What is Shabak territory?

00:15:33.920 What is intelligence military territory?

00:15:36.340 What is Mossad territory?

00:15:37.380 And this is something that has to be, I mean, thought of and reformed.

00:15:43.240 Because things are maybe different than they were after 67, right?

00:15:49.600 And it's a mixture of conflicts in between us and the Palestinian Authority and the people

00:15:56.380 living in territories A, B, and C. That's part of the Judea and Samaria area.

00:16:01.680 And if you go back to Gaza, Gaza is not part of the Palestinian Authority, non-officially.

00:16:08.340 Officially, it's theirs. 0.99

00:16:09.120 So all this map, which is a kind of a cocktail of troubles, has to be reformed.

00:16:17.840 And in order to reform that, I think that you need a body from above to tell you you went wrong

00:16:22.380 there and there and there.

00:16:23.640 We better change it that manner, into that manner, so we will have the intelligence needed

00:16:29.300 and the defense needed, okay?

00:16:31.400 That's the first line of defense.

00:16:33.800 It's a very, very big question that I have, is why did it happen?

00:16:41.040 Or as I think I described it in my book and I said, I'm not surprised, but I'm shocked.

00:16:46.840 I'm not surprised that we didn't have enough intelligence.

00:16:49.720 I said that blindly.

00:16:51.180 I'm shocked that level of intelligence was so poor, unfortunately.

00:16:56.180 So we didn't see, you know, it's not a lone wolf that I have to find.

00:17:02.240 When he's driving on his scooter from Baghdad, cutting into Syria, going all the way into 0.97

00:17:07.900 Turkey, I mean, to conduct terror activity, or here into London, in London itself, I have 1.00

00:17:13.580 to see that.

00:17:15.140 One, it's 1,500 terrorists altogether, simultaneously.

00:17:20.200 I mean, imagine, I'm trying to, okay, the size of the people supporting this 1,500.

00:17:27.740 How many people knew about that secret, right?

00:17:32.980 Logistics, training, technical support, telecommunication, I mean, all that.

00:17:38.140 I mean, think about all the, I mean, it's you, I know.

00:17:40.520 And just to interrupt, Yossi, as a complete layman, I'm listening to what you're saying.

00:17:44.740 I mean, you're making great point after great point after great point about this.

00:17:47.480 And I'm going, well, why have Israeli secret services not infiltrated Hamas? 0.94

00:17:52.220 Why isn't there a guy there going, hey, they're going to launch a f***ing attack. 0.83

00:17:56.500 You best get, why didn't that happen?

00:17:59.320 That's the same question.

00:18:00.300 I mean, what went wrong?

00:18:01.400 I mean, everything went wrong.

00:18:03.480 If you don't know what the enemy is planning for you, all right, you're not doing your job.

00:18:07.320 My job is to tell you, I mean, not you only, but you know what, you too.

00:18:13.540 I mean, my best, one of my best partners here in the UK, and we refer to that because I'm sure that you're going to ask about the amazing and important declaration of Prime Minister Starmer about the Palestinian future, whatever Palestinian state.

00:18:29.740 But at that time that I was conducting this intelligence bureau of mine, or the Mossad, one of my best partners was the MA5, your local security here.

00:18:41.900 And local security has to be informed by all others who is going to do something against your own kingdom, all right?

00:18:49.420 So if you knew that, you have passed your job with distinction.

00:18:54.700 If you fade, you know nothing.

00:18:59.600 You know what?

00:19:00.440 Knowing nothing means that there is a terror attack in the streets of London.

00:19:05.040 Knowing nothing is like, where is the Iranian nuclear sites?

00:19:10.080 Knowing nothing is what is Hezbollah planning for us. 0.82

00:19:12.520 This is knowing nothing.

00:19:13.480 So you have to invest a lot in order to know, all right?

00:19:16.960 So if you haven't penetrated them correctly, okay, by all means, I'm not saying only human, like human intelligence is my profession, all right?

00:19:24.700 How to recruit people from within the enemy, whatever bodies and entities.

00:19:29.400 If you don't do that, it means you know nothing.

00:19:32.260 I mean, I think that knowing significantly is the version, is the right version.

00:19:36.340 You may know, but you don't know enough.

00:19:39.300 And we didn't know enough.

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00:20:55.720 One of the things that I really enjoyed, Yossi, about your book is you talked about the mindset of an operative who goes behind enemy lines,

00:21:04.960 who gets to know the enemy and the way that you frame it.

00:21:09.160 Can you talk a little bit about that?

00:21:11.100 Because the psychology of that is fascinating.

00:21:15.600 Yeah, it's all about mindset, I think.

00:21:19.240 Well, to be an operative, I mean, you have to fit the job, right?

00:21:24.080 I'm not sure that I can be a great commentary or whatever interview guy.

00:21:29.260 I mean, you have to have a, like, different mindset, I mean, for every single job that there is, I believe, around the globe, right?

00:21:36.980 I mean, everybody has his own profession, and that's a profession.

00:21:41.080 That's a very, very important profession, I think, I mean, for the sake of all countries.

00:21:45.600 But in order to be an operative, I mean, inside this huge profession that we call spionage, I mean, you have to have a special, I would have qualities, let's put it that way, that fits or that would fit in the job.

00:22:00.700 And what is it that we need, all right?

00:22:07.100 I mean, we need, first, I mean, I think, humbly saying, I think that you have to be a brave guy.

00:22:12.520 I mean, in a way, you have to know how to go and to penetrate, I mean, behind enemy lines.

00:22:16.600 I mean, you have to go and travel and to know who you are undercover.

00:22:20.700 Undercover, I mean, you have to work a lot undercover, you have to present something else which is not your truth, a true identity, and this is something that has to be worked upon.

00:22:34.420 The mindset that you have referred to is something that you wear every time that you leave the country, every time that you're out of Israel, there is a kind of a mindset that says,

00:22:46.620 I'm not who I am anymore, I'm not Yossi anymore, now I am whatever, Michael, Richard, or David, not David, David's not good, but other names.

00:22:57.520 I refer to Gabriel, but it's not a good one too, but never mind, I mean, it used to be Muhammad or Masoud or whatever.

00:23:04.360 And this kind of shield is the only one that protects you, okay, in front of the enemy.

00:23:10.820 This is what he sees, you want him to see that and that only.

00:23:14.360 So you have to be a kind of a actor on a stage.

00:23:19.540 So the spionage arena is a kind of a huge stage, okay, the world stage, okay, that you go in wearing this kind of, not physical, but cover stories mask, okay, and you have to play it, and you have to play it right.

00:23:33.620 You have to be whatever you want to do in front of your given audience.

00:23:38.380 They may be Iranians, or Europeans, or South Africans, or South Americans, or whatever.

00:23:45.580 I mean, you have to go places that will have to, and you have to play your own character by yourself.

00:23:52.880 And each one of us has to play his own character by himself, and they're changing characters.

00:23:56.940 I mean, they're not all the time the same.

00:23:59.140 Okay, I mean, you have different characters, like an actor on stage again.

00:24:04.340 I mean, you can play, what is it, Phantom of the Opera, and the next day you can play Book of Mormons. 0.68

00:24:09.000 I mean, you, I mean, these are the shows that I've seen here.

00:24:12.640 Absolutely.

00:24:14.240 So it still reflects.

00:24:15.760 I mean, you don't do Abba Voyage, because that's a different thing.

00:24:18.700 It's all...

00:24:19.240 Yeah, absolutely.

00:24:19.980 But the one that you describe it beautifully in the book is when you talk about the character of Abdullah.

00:24:26.220 And that is very interesting.

00:24:28.180 Because?

00:24:28.740 Because.

00:24:29.660 Because what it does is we are fed a lot of nonsense, I would say, about spy.

00:24:35.440 And you say it in the book as well, about what it is to be a spy.

00:24:38.460 But with the story of Abdullah, you actually explain espionage as it truly is.

00:24:44.040 And I know that there's millions of people out there who would be fascinated by that.

00:24:48.640 So let's talk about that story.

00:24:50.260 And how it was that you made that particular, that case work.

00:24:55.300 Well, in this kind of case, or like other cases, I mean, you have to know what the target is.

00:25:01.540 You have to know what you want to achieve.

00:25:03.160 I mean, there, I mean, generally speaking, there is a map of targets, okay?

00:25:07.880 I mean, in front of us.

00:25:08.740 I mean, we know what we have to achieve as the State of Israel, of course, at the Mossad.

00:25:13.380 We do know what are the targets that we have to know.

00:25:15.720 Assume that we need to know something about the Iranian nuclear stuff.

00:25:22.120 How do we map, okay, our targets in order to make sure that we will get engaged, okay, we will engage, I'm sorry, to the targets that we need, that are there.

00:25:31.960 And you have to build a kind of an arm of intelligence that will study who are the targets inside.

00:25:41.340 These are the intelligence officers at the back office, right?

00:25:45.880 They gather what we have as for now, and we say, okay, now we know, let's say, 20% of the picture.

00:25:51.340 We have to know 80%, 100% of what they do.

00:25:54.140 These are the targets that have to know, these are the targets that have to be achieved.

00:25:57.060 Part of them are physical.

00:25:58.300 Part of them are visual.

00:25:59.360 Part of them are by recruiting people from within the entities or from within the, I mean, in that case, within the Iranian or the Hezbollah group.

00:26:12.340 And you have to, and each one of us or each group of us, I mean, gets its proper targets.

00:26:20.100 It's not that everyone is doing everything.

00:26:22.260 I mean, some of us are doing some.

00:26:24.140 And we do have a line of targets that has to be engaged by us.

00:26:29.080 And when Abdullah's case, like many others, I believe, I mean, I refer to that probably because this is the one I, whatever, I remembered.

00:26:39.800 I mean, we're writing the book, but there are so many other, or there were thousands of stories that I can reveal or thousands of cover stories that I can reveal to.

00:26:47.380 I mean, referring to this twin thing that has to up in between the target and me or the target and us.

00:26:57.220 Okay.

00:26:57.660 This is something that has to be conducted beautifully, smoothly, without anyone knowing that you are there, without anyone knowing that you have arrived, without anyone knowing what is your proper reason for being there.

00:27:10.060 And without him or her suspecting that he is a target, while we know everything about him already.

00:27:19.520 So there is a huge advantage on our side that we know what the enemy or what the enemy is and what he does.

00:27:25.500 Because on their side, of course, there are some cases that they have suspected, or there are some cases that they believe that we're not who we are and who we present we are.

00:27:38.520 And we had some problems to explain that.

00:27:40.740 Sometimes they have to run away or to escape, I mean, from the espionage arena, as we probably call it.

00:27:46.740 But this is something that refers to a given operation or to any operation.

00:27:53.780 It will, I believe, be conducted in a very different manner.

00:28:02.100 So each one of them has probably the same fundamental capabilities and abilities.

00:28:08.560 I mean, either organizational ones or private ones or personal ones.

00:28:14.020 And then it has to be conducted towards the target.

00:28:17.220 And I hope I answered your question.

00:28:18.600 No, no, you did.

00:28:19.300 You did.

00:28:19.680 You did answer the question.

00:28:20.660 But the thing that I found fascinating is you were talking about weaknesses of character in the book.

00:28:26.220 And you were saying that every time...

00:28:27.700 Our side or theirs?

00:28:28.940 Their side.

00:28:30.020 Yeah, both.

00:28:30.520 But no, but their side.

00:28:32.100 And you said that there are things that people crave deep down that motivate them.

00:28:37.440 For some people, it's money.

00:28:38.400 For some people, it's sex. 0.95

00:28:40.100 And you...

00:28:40.480 So explain that when you're targeting someone because you want something out and whether it be information or something else.

00:28:49.480 Right.

00:28:49.700 I mean, I think that what we're trying to do is first to know the target very well.

00:28:53.880 Okay.

00:28:54.360 If anyone is the target and I know him, but I know him by whatever, either listening to him or following him or know,

00:29:02.100 including his friends or recruiting him or his entourage, I mean, people that are around him are already speaking about him, doesn't really give me the real character, who he really is.

00:29:13.120 Right.

00:29:13.420 And this is true for anyone.

00:29:15.800 I mean, in any, I would say, human contact in between any one of us, I mean, there are layers that have been seen and layers that you don't see.

00:29:26.800 Our mission is to be his best friend.

00:29:28.300 In order to know who he really is, I mean, you have to really be his best friend.

00:29:33.540 I mean, you really have to believe, has to believe that you are his best friend or an ally or a colleague or someone that can serve his interests.

00:29:43.600 And each one of us has different interests, but most of them are common.

00:29:47.280 Okay.

00:29:47.720 I mean, I'm not sure about you guys.

00:29:49.320 I'm, you know, target, of course, but thinking about yourselves as someone that has kind of an interest.

00:29:54.760 I mean, who would you be interested to speaking to tomorrow?

00:29:59.120 Who would be the one?

00:30:00.060 That's what I'm looking for.

00:30:01.540 I mean, would you like to be in a different place?

00:30:05.780 Do you want to move a different country, different city?

00:30:07.740 Do you want to have a different profession?

00:30:09.760 Do you want to move higher in your organization?

00:30:13.280 Do you want to be rich?

00:30:14.340 Do you want to save yourself from poverty?

00:30:16.760 I mean, do you like to move ahead with your whatever, family, life, kids, wife, so forth?

00:30:24.080 Or do you hate enough your regime?

00:30:28.740 So to help me, helping you, saving yourself from the current regime.

00:30:33.040 This is, by the way, I think that John le Carré, I mean, phrased that beautifully said,

00:30:37.880 a good source has to hate someone and love someone.

00:30:43.100 And this is very much the truth.

00:30:46.460 Because when you are engaging with these kind of targets, with these kind of objects, as we call them,

00:30:53.500 you really have to know where are they?

00:30:57.160 Are they, I mean, take Hezbollah, for example.

00:30:59.420 Are they with Nasrallah?

00:31:01.780 Rest in peace.

00:31:02.880 Are they with him?

00:31:03.580 Do they believe in Hezbollah's agenda?

00:31:08.060 Or are they counter that?

00:31:10.060 Did they, or are they part of the Iranian nuclear thing because that's the proper job, 0.86

00:31:16.320 but they don't have an alternative, but they do not support that?

00:31:19.560 Or do they support it?

00:31:20.940 Do they like the Iranian regime to stay?

00:31:23.100 Or they want a change of regime currently?

00:31:27.140 It's a big thing to know.

00:31:28.920 For an Iranian guy or Hezbollah or a terrorist, I mean, to tell you, I don't like what I do,

00:31:33.840 and I counter what they do inside my country, it's a big thing, because who are you?

00:31:38.760 It needs a super thick level of trust.

00:31:42.800 So they will tell you, they reveal the secrets, and say, I don't like them.

00:31:46.460 Can I tell you that?

00:31:48.620 It's a risky thing to say.

00:31:50.880 Super risky thing to say.

00:31:52.240 Not only in Iran, in all these dictatorships and autocrats, I mean, whatever,

00:31:57.760 all these countries that are eventually forcing you not only to work upon a given target

00:32:04.840 or a given whatever vision, it could be the Iranian regime or Hezbollah or other terror organizations,

00:32:10.020 but they force you to accept what they offer unless you will be fired.

00:32:16.080 And it's a very risky job.

00:32:18.380 Not our side only.

00:32:19.980 There's two.

00:32:20.520 I mean, in order to agree to open your heart to someone that you've just met,

00:32:25.920 maybe a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago,

00:32:29.400 but someone that you've just met and telling you, hey, who are you?

00:32:34.300 And we know, oh, interesting to know, and then you go into this kind of relationship,

00:32:39.540 you have to be super tight with him.

00:32:42.680 The level of trust should be super tight that he will reveal his secrets

00:32:46.340 and he will reveal his, whatever, his heart.

00:32:49.000 I mean, he will open his heart to you.

00:32:51.060 And then when you have a friend on the other side, when there is a trust with your object,

00:32:57.840 okay, you can do much more.

00:33:00.220 And are there people that, are there many people that can't be turned?

00:33:03.620 That cannot be?

00:33:04.580 Yeah.

00:33:04.760 I can't assume that.

00:33:07.680 I know.

00:33:08.240 In our workflow, there are many objects.

00:33:10.620 I mean, of course, some of them, or maybe many of them have rejected all that.

00:33:15.460 I mean, they said, no, we can't.

00:33:17.060 Or to a point, they say, I don't need that.

00:33:19.560 I'm not interested.

00:33:20.500 Or many versions of many ways to leave your agent or to leave your operator, right?

00:33:26.600 There are many ways, I mean, to say no.

00:33:28.300 But there are many ways to say yes.

00:33:29.820 And there are more than that.

00:33:30.980 I think that not everyone is capable to recruit.

00:33:35.580 Not everyone.

00:33:36.320 I mean, put yourself in these shoes.

00:33:38.900 I mean, try to see, I mean, how would I do that?

00:33:41.800 Do I have the capacity and capability to do that?

00:33:43.760 I mean, to play and to go and to say and to keep cover story

00:33:47.420 and to give arguments to the other part, to the people in front of me,

00:33:51.960 I mean, to the person in front of me telling him,

00:33:54.180 okay, I mean, trust me, I'm your best friend.

00:33:57.920 And more than that, I have to assume that everybody, everyone can be recruited.

00:34:03.140 I have to assume that.

00:34:03.960 I know it doesn't sound realistic because not all of them are recruitable, you can say.

00:34:12.340 But if that's a target, I will have to try.

00:34:17.420 And by the way, sometimes we surprise ourselves.

00:34:22.940 Sometimes you go to someone that you see openly, that is enchanting

00:34:27.780 and conducting the best way that the regime wants him to do.

00:34:35.140 He speaks openly for the regime.

00:34:38.420 He's so much in favor.

00:34:39.860 But we see other layers.

00:34:41.920 We do see other layers.

00:34:43.800 We see his, whatever, other layers.

00:34:45.900 I don't want to go in.

00:34:46.520 But when you engage with him, and after a few weeks or a few months,

00:34:51.100 this is the only way really to know who he is, where his heart is.

00:34:55.320 Is this the guy I see on television, on public, on his whatever arena, local, whatever stadium?

00:35:03.340 I mean, singing the regime song?

00:35:06.440 Or do I see the real one that I need?

00:35:11.000 And there's a huge gap in between who they are publicly and who they are secretly or in between friends and family.

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00:36:30.100 That makes sense.

00:36:31.120 So that takes us nicely into Iran.

00:36:33.020 I mean, the biggest coup of your career as Director of Mossad, that we know about at least, was stealing Iran's nuclear secrets.

00:36:39.440 Yeah.

00:36:41.060 How did that happen?

00:36:42.840 And more importantly, what did you find?

00:36:44.760 Because actually, it's interesting now.

00:36:46.880 Israel wasn't really much in the news until two years ago.

00:36:51.940 And I think for...

00:36:52.800 Israel was not much in the news until two years ago.

00:36:55.440 He was not.

00:36:56.160 Not here.

00:36:56.500 Not in the UK.

00:36:57.540 No, not in the West.

00:36:58.380 Really?

00:36:58.740 No.

00:36:59.000 Yeah.

00:36:59.220 No.

00:36:59.560 I'll be honest with you.

00:37:00.260 It might be unpleasant for Israelis to hear, but no one really cared about Israel until October 7th happened.

00:37:05.060 Yeah.

00:37:05.100 But now, it's obviously become a bigger conversation.

00:37:08.600 Oh, you were dealing with your Brexit and stuff, right?

00:37:10.760 I mean, that was more important.

00:37:11.600 We've got a lot of problems.

00:37:14.160 Immigration and other... 0.98

00:37:15.280 Let's not get into that, because we're going to start crying.

00:37:17.380 So, your coup, stealing Iran's nuclear secrets, happened before October 7th, obviously, significantly before.

00:37:26.500 What did you find, first of all?

00:37:29.340 Because this was a big point of contention when Trump and Netanyahu...

00:37:32.940 Absolutely right.

00:37:33.640 ...bond the nuclear facilities.

00:37:35.120 I want to ask you about that, too.

00:37:36.360 Okay, I will.

00:37:37.020 If you fast forward your question into June 2025, this is the full answer.

00:37:43.820 And I will go backwards.

00:37:44.900 Fine.

00:37:45.080 Okay?

00:37:45.460 I mean, with your permission.

00:37:47.420 In 2016, after a few months, the JCPO was already signed.

00:37:53.420 It was signed in July 2015 by the P5 Plus One.

00:37:58.820 UK included, right?

00:38:00.580 England, France, Germany, USA, China, and Russia.

00:38:06.220 It's weird to think that all of these have worked together, all right?

00:38:10.220 Now they're totally split.

00:38:12.020 And the P5 Plus One has signed what we call the JCPOA, the nuclear deal. 0.98

00:38:19.660 It's not a deal.

00:38:20.420 Eventually, it's a plan of action.

00:38:21.660 JCPOA, joint comprehensive plan of action.

00:38:23.800 That was a plan of action.

00:38:25.580 When it was signed, we didn't like it.

00:38:27.280 We, Israel, we didn't like it.

00:38:28.380 Very briefly, why?

00:38:29.300 Because we felt that the agreement is a terrible agreement that leaves Iran with a lot of capabilities and capacities. 1.00

00:38:38.640 And we wanted them to go on zero.

00:38:40.500 No enrichment, no sites, no nuclear sites, no scientists, no Murtin and Fakhrizadeh group, what we call the weapon group.

00:38:49.320 We wanted all that to be eventually dismissed, dismantled, whatever.

00:38:52.680 I mean, to zero.

00:38:54.140 Whereas it gave them some leeway?

00:38:56.660 It gave them a lot of leeway, I mean, until the sunset.

00:38:58.780 I mean, not only that.

00:38:59.640 I mean, the Iranians eventually kept their capabilities. 0.99

00:39:02.480 And that's a problem.

00:39:03.240 It is true that if you go, I mean, we're not going to do a nuclear seminar, but the one thing that bothered us above it all, that they've kept capabilities in the bunkers alive.

00:39:15.460 That means that they can not only enrich uranium in the bunkers, they can even improve the enrichment.

00:39:22.620 What they did.

00:39:24.060 Eventually, this is exactly what worried us.

00:39:25.880 And more than that, there is a sunset clause, as we call it, the sunset clause, as we call it, which is something that says that in a given time, the agreement eventually will be dismissed or will be canceled or will be eventually banished or abandoned.

00:39:43.640 It's not permanent.

00:39:44.460 Yeah, not anymore.

00:39:46.060 And we didn't like that.

00:39:47.200 We thought that Iran should be very low kept by the level of enrichment, if at all.

00:39:53.560 OK, and that all nuclear sites, including the scientific work that they conducted, should be completely closed and shut down.

00:40:01.540 OK, that was the one of the main arguments.

00:40:04.820 All that was very well opened and kept by the Iranians, according to that agreement. 1.00

00:40:09.360 That's why we posed that dramatically.

00:40:12.020 I was one of the negotiators.

00:40:14.560 I mean, at the time I was the prime negotiator for the Stellar Israel for the nuclear deal.

00:40:18.540 I had conducted this kind of relationship with the UK, French, all the others.

00:40:23.560 And we said, I mean, because every country received a kind of a vertical to deal with inside their agreement, headed by the USA, of course.

00:40:32.900 OK, the foreign ministry, I mean, the secretary of state and his team at the time, John Kerry, Wendy Sherman and the others.

00:40:38.620 So we didn't like it that much.

00:40:40.580 And we have told them that in our perspective, I mean, everything or everything that Iran is doing is under one vision. 0.89

00:40:49.300 I mean, they're heading the bomb.

00:40:50.620 I mean, they're trying to pave their way to the bomb.

00:40:55.020 And this is something that they have declared again and again and again from within the system that they're doing.

00:41:00.420 They said, yeah, of course, because of that, we need an agreement.

00:41:03.040 And we said we have to attack the sides.

00:41:05.820 If they don't stop, we have to attack the gap that was not fulfilled till June 13th this year.

00:41:12.840 But in 2016, after the agreement was signed, we saw something very weird happening in Iran, which is under Ministry of Defense and Dr. Moksen Fakhrizadeh, rest in peace.

00:41:25.760 They have started to collect this kind of materials from all over the country under a very discreet manner.

00:41:33.600 Super secret thing that's happening in Iran itself says you will bring us everything that you have, hardware, software, disks, papers, documents, everything that we have done under this nuclear secret activity into one side.

00:41:50.560 That's alerted me.

00:41:52.200 That was the thing that I said, something wrong is happening there.

00:41:55.920 I don't know what is it yet, but I want to know what's there.

00:42:00.880 Two years later, that was the archive, right?

00:42:03.660 And we said two things at the beginning.

00:42:05.180 One, don't lose your eye from the ball.

00:42:08.400 Make sure that we know everything that he is doing or they're doing because there were few who knew about that in Iran itself.

00:42:14.600 And number two, when we see it lands somewhere in Iran, okay, it has to be, by the way,

00:42:20.960 a site that is not recognized as an official site because of the agreement.

00:42:26.680 Because the IAEA, the agency, I mean, the nuclear agency, atomic agency in Vienna, under the agreement could visit any site.

00:42:35.400 All right?

00:42:35.720 So, they say if the site is not on the official list, okay, I mean, they don't even know how to ask where to visit.

00:42:43.620 You can't inspect a site you don't know about.

00:42:44.860 You can't inspect a site you don't know about.

00:42:46.240 Yeah.

00:42:46.500 Exactly.

00:42:47.040 Okay.

00:42:47.200 And that's why they placed it in a kind of a warehouse inside Tehran in a kind of an industrial area, okay?

00:42:55.180 We found out that this is what they do that raises our suspicions even higher.

00:43:01.600 And then I've instructed my teams, bring it home.

00:43:06.440 I want to know what's in it.

00:43:08.700 I think that they are hiding the filthiest secrets of Iran, bring it home. 1.00

00:43:15.120 Two years later, we did.

00:43:16.560 Okay, it took us a long time to conduct this kind of operation.

00:43:20.260 I mean, a lot of troubles on the way.

00:43:22.060 We've been in Iran hundreds of times.

00:43:24.360 I mean, collecting information, recruiting people from within.

00:43:27.660 I mean, not exactly what's happening in this kind of warehouse.

00:43:30.300 When we brought the archive in, in January 2018, we've operated, but it took us a few months to get it out.

00:43:42.740 It was not FedEx or...

00:43:45.840 Well, you talk about it was a half a ton of materials.

00:43:47.940 Half a ton of materials, true.

00:43:49.540 We didn't bring the hardware in, but we brought a lot of documents and disks, a lot of videos and hard disks.

00:43:57.240 I mean, amazing stuff.

00:43:58.280 We've been surprised ourselves.

00:44:00.700 So what did you find?

00:44:02.020 We found out that there was, and there is still, massive activity that is in light of a nuclear bomb.

00:44:13.520 Not like Iran has ever declared before.

00:44:16.240 They have denied ever doing anything like the path or paving the path towards a nuclear bomb.

00:44:25.080 This is what they did.

00:44:26.240 But we found out that they did.

00:44:27.700 And now we have absolute evidence, okay?

00:44:31.460 A lot of evidence that show that this is what they did.

00:44:35.580 Can you give us some specifics on what they're doing?

00:44:38.080 I mean, in a nuclear activity, I mean, if you want to hide it, I mean, according to the Iranians, you don't have...

00:44:44.540 And you can't work under any inspection of the IEA.

00:44:47.560 And we found out that they have done a lot of work, many sites that we had found out were not known to anyone, never declared, but a lot of activity was happening there, right?

00:44:59.760 And we did find many, many, many, many, many sites that were conducting actual and physical nuclear work without declaring it to the IAEA.

00:45:11.960 So, in one hand, Iran is conducting kind of negotiations with the West, or with the West East and Russia, and signing an agreement saying, well, our intention is not, of course, for a nuclear bomb.

00:45:23.300 I mean, this is all clean.

00:45:24.180 On the other hand, now we see the reality.

00:45:27.080 Iran is conducting kind of a discrete alternative job, or alternative nuclear job, that eventually creates the path to the bomb. 0.89

00:45:35.360 And this could not be allowed.

00:45:36.600 That was the reason for us to go on with it.

00:45:41.760 Because the, I mean, in the intelligence philosophy, I mean, there is, the use of intelligence will always be more valuable than the intelligence itself.

00:45:52.360 Meaning, if you know something, it's okay.

00:45:55.220 If you use it, it's so much better.

00:45:57.520 If you know that there is a terrorist coming, it's okay.

00:46:00.000 If you use it and you disrupt his terror activity, that's very useful.

00:46:04.540 Same goes for the Iranian thing. 0.80

00:46:06.480 So, this is what we did.

00:46:08.320 We have, I mean, the Prime Minister did.

00:46:10.100 Prime Minister Netanyahu had a very important press release, whatever, I mean, press conference, and he revealed that we have that.

00:46:19.280 I mean, it didn't show everything, but that was a kind of a shocking thing to all negotiators.

00:46:23.800 What we did, I did personally, is that I have ordered to copy it bit by bit, all of it, all the archive, and give it to one by one.

00:46:33.540 To the head of the CIA at the time, to the head of the MI6 at the time, to the head of the DGSE at the time, the French Mossad at the time, every one of them, and to the Russians, Chinese, and partially to the Germans, and to the IEA.

00:46:47.760 And telling them, okay, this is the archive, we tell you nothing about that.

00:46:51.560 Do you tell us what's in it?

00:46:52.800 First, do you endorse it, or do you think we faked it, as the Iranian would claim?

00:46:58.200 Everyone endorsed it, including the IEA, and this is the most important part.

00:47:02.880 By the way, a few weeks later, President Trump exits the agreement, saying, Israel has just provided us with new materials that shows that Iran lied all the way to the agreement.

00:47:12.380 And now we understand their truth, or what they're really doing, the reality that they were trying to create for us.

00:47:20.040 And number two, everyone, all services, including the IEA, endorsed completely what was in it, and said, this is a problematic issue that has to be declared, or not declared, cleaned, or cleared in between us and Iran.

00:47:37.300 Which brings us very rapidly to June of this year.

00:47:40.280 Exactly.

00:47:40.560 Because you just used a phrase that I found very interesting, saying, and is still.

00:47:45.240 Are you saying that the strikes that were conducted on Iran have not destroyed fully their nuclear bomb? 0.79

00:47:49.760 I do.

00:47:50.340 I think, I mean, fully destroyed is a very big word, I think, or sentence.

00:47:53.660 So they still have nuclear sites that are operating?

00:47:55.500 I think that they have, we have to understand that Iran hasn't given its motivation, or agenda, to reach a nuclear bomb.

00:48:07.360 I do not believe them at all.

00:48:08.940 Not the supreme leaders, as we falsely call him, declarations.

00:48:14.740 That he says, we're not interested in the bomb.

00:48:16.540 No, of course not.

00:48:17.160 So what is that, sir?

00:48:18.220 And if not, let us visit it, because the sequence was, before 13th of June, is that the IAEA had this board of governors, I mean, describing why Iran is violating all the inspectors, right?

00:48:34.380 Or the inspection activity inside Iran.

00:48:38.420 And that was a very important decision that gave the light green light, okay, to that attack.

00:48:45.940 Because President Trump said openly, at the White House, with the prime minister sitting next to him, he said, there are three things that I do.

00:48:53.840 I give the negotiations a chance.

00:48:56.380 And I give it 60 days for the Iranians to engage with us.

00:48:59.840 If an agreement will be achieved my way, we have an agreement.

00:49:03.200 If not, we will attack, Israel would lead the attack. 1.00

00:49:08.480 And these three things have actually happened.

00:49:10.760 Iran did not come clean to the IAEA demands.

00:49:14.520 They never did, by the way, till today.

00:49:17.000 Sites that were destroyed, the attack.

00:49:20.860 That we knew that they were conducting military, kind of military activity, or military to the bomb activity, that we had to take over, I mean, this kind of strike.

00:49:32.700 And more than that, they said, since you don't come clean, with all evidence that we'd found at the archive, we're coming to get you.

00:49:40.880 Now, if it was fully destroyed, to my knowledge, enrichment is not happening anymore in Iran, right now.

00:49:47.560 Now, we may miss something.

00:49:49.600 As I told you, you don't know what you don't know.

00:49:51.520 So they may hide more than what we have.

00:49:55.540 There may be another site that we don't see.

00:49:57.760 Maybe there is another activity that we don't know of.

00:50:00.200 We know what we have destroyed.

00:50:01.640 We know the people that we took away, unfortunately.

00:50:03.640 We know what we have stopped, but we don't know what we don't know.

00:50:07.500 So what we know is that we have to conduct more penetrative operations inside Iran to make sure that we know more about their current activity.

00:50:17.560 And if we find any new activity, or these activities that were never seized because of the attack, Iran do understand something very well now. 0.99

00:50:30.020 That we can, it's an important sentence, that we can come again.

00:50:33.440 Sure.

00:50:34.600 Not only us, I mean, the B2s of the Americans can come again too, right? 1.00

00:50:37.780 Well, I think that message is probably quite clear to them now.

00:50:40.580 I would think.

00:50:41.460 A question I was going to ask you is, based on your time as director, Mossad, based on your intelligence, based on what you know, why does Iran want a nuclear bomb?

00:50:54.260 I think that they want to be immune from the region, maybe from the state of Israel or others.

00:51:01.620 I mean, they are in a consistent conflict with their neighbors all the time.

00:51:06.520 What does that mean, being immune?

00:51:07.700 Two very close neighbors do have nuclear bombs.

00:51:12.220 Pakistan and India, very close countries, I mean, physically, I mean, to Iran.

00:51:17.500 And Israel.

00:51:18.860 I don't know about that.

00:51:21.460 I don't know about that.

00:51:24.180 Okay.

00:51:24.660 But Pakistan and India do know, I mean, that they do have nuclear military capabilities.

00:51:32.660 And since they are Shiites and not Sunnah, all right, there are in a constant conflict with the region too. 0.50

00:51:39.820 So they're very much worried about that.

00:51:41.360 And this is number one.

00:51:42.200 Number two is to be immune when you are passive is one thing.

00:51:47.640 But to be immune when you are so aggressive in the region is a different thing.

00:51:51.280 Because the Iranian vision is the Sheet Crescent. 0.97

00:51:54.980 If you have the map of the northern part of the Middle East, I mean, there is kind of a cut through Iraq, I mean, from Iran into Iraq.

00:52:01.900 And then into Syria, going down to Lebanon, okay, to create the vision, okay, what we call the Sheet Crescent. 0.91

00:52:08.160 And there are many Shia there.

00:52:10.160 And I think that Iran is trying to create this kind of Sheet Crescent, if declared or not. 0.96

00:52:16.360 And, by the way, they've done that beautifully in Iraq by Qasem Soleimani at the time.

00:52:21.840 Hashdashabi, there was like a kind of a local Shiite force working for him, for them, under an absolutely supervision of the Iranian.

00:52:31.220 They kept the Assad regime alive while conquering part of the country or the regime itself. 0.63

00:52:38.760 And, of course, they've, like, dominated Lebanon through the Hezbollah and other Shiite organizations. 0.85

00:52:46.060 So I believe that all that map that you see creates a kind of a need to be immune or telling the world, you can't touch me anymore.

00:52:55.100 Now I have nuclear and you don't mess up with me.

00:52:58.340 And I believe that for these two reasons, I mean, Iran has eventually conducted this kind of activity. 0.88

00:53:03.160 And it's really interesting in the book where you talk about how you actually, how Mossad, because people have got this image of Mossad, which is obviously incorrect, but you help.

00:53:15.600 Incorrect in many ways.

00:53:16.760 Incorrect in many ways.

00:53:17.980 You know, there's a conspiracy theories we don't need to go into because they're boring and tedious, as far as I'm concerned.

00:53:23.420 Okay.

00:53:23.620 But you work a lot with British intelligence, helping Brits on the street, Brits in London, where we are now, remain safe.

00:53:32.340 Can you explain that a little bit?

00:53:33.680 Of course.

00:53:34.100 I mean, the time was ISIS time, Daesh, as we call it in Arby.

00:53:39.140 ISIS was all over.

00:53:41.580 And under the coalition, you had a kind of a 74 countries that were working together, I mean, to defeat Daesh, to defeat ISIS.

00:53:51.500 That was the right thing to do.

00:53:54.220 By the way, numbers.

00:53:55.720 Okay.

00:53:56.180 I mean, the size of Daesh, presumably, was in between 40,000 to 60,000 terrorists, same size of Hamas.

00:54:03.160 We're doing it alone.

00:54:04.620 You did it with 74 countries or even more.

00:54:07.000 The coalition that was formed by President Obama at the time was trying to do the right stuff.

00:54:11.420 Did Daesh was or was it defeated completely?

00:54:15.020 I'm not sure, but this will be said sometime in the future.

00:54:18.060 Nevertheless, I mean, Daesh or ISIS kept a very important international body that they call international body, the international Daesh.

00:54:25.180 There was a kind of a branch inside Daesh in Iraq itself and connected to Syria that was conducting terror activity outside of the Levant.

00:54:35.200 All right.

00:54:35.620 ISIS is part of the Levant, right?

00:54:37.380 ISIL.

00:54:37.920 Remember, they call this ISIL because of the Levant.

00:54:40.760 The Islamic State inside the Levant.

00:54:42.040 They were trying to conduct operations outside of the Levant, meaning cutting out of Syria into Turkey.

00:54:50.360 And now they are in like in a kind of a very, very pleasant or much more comfortable arena for them to operate.

00:54:58.500 And then going all the way down from Syria into Europe till the end of Europe. 0.85

00:55:04.480 I mean, it could be either Lisbon, London or anywhere else.

00:55:09.140 What I have understood is that there is this kind of international body that we can provide much more intelligence to our counterparts around the world,

00:55:21.540 even if the terror activity is not really directed to either Israeli entities or to Jewish communities.

00:55:28.020 By the way, that was happening too, of course, in Turkey, in Istanbul, against our synagogue and the rabbi and more than that.

00:55:34.900 And then I have created the kind of a team that working intensively to create intelligence, to create intelligence together with 8200, of course,

00:55:46.120 and to bring it over, to bring it over to my counterparts in the places that we see.

00:55:53.160 I mean, ISIS has been interested in operating.

00:55:54.960 And that have created the kind of a super strong bonding between me and the MI5 at the time.

00:56:01.300 Of course, the MI6 too.

00:56:02.560 I mean, both directors, I mean, for both organizations were super good allies and super good friends and super good counterparts.

00:56:11.800 And we did understand together that there is a kind of a common enemy that we have to fight together.

00:56:15.960 And I think that I can quote the former head of MI5 who told us at the Mossad in one of the visits here and in his headquarters

00:56:27.060 that we deserve the Oscar for the, I mean, he said we don't have an Oscar for intelligence work,

00:56:33.100 but you deserve the Oscar for what you have done to disrupt terror activity inside England, inside the UK.

00:56:39.900 And this is something very important, very meaningful.

00:56:42.620 And this is what we did, I mean, for a long, long, long time.

00:56:45.560 Yeah.

00:56:45.960 And that being the case, how severe are the threats to the UK from these terror cells?

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00:58:33.760 How severe are the threats to the UK from these terror cells?

00:58:38.020 I think that they're all the time there.

00:58:39.660 I mean, being part of the West, like not being part of the radicalist Islam, is a kind of a thing that has to be all the time taken care of.

00:58:54.060 You are not acceptable.

00:58:55.700 We are not acceptable. 0.58

00:58:56.720 We're Jewish or Christians, whatever.

00:58:58.100 We're not acceptable by these radicalists.

00:59:00.040 I mean, they think that we do not have the right to exist.

00:59:02.560 I mean, not only as a country, but as human beings.

00:59:05.660 And therefore, I mean, you see a lot of this activity happening all the time.

00:59:09.660 I think that currently I'm not aware of the level of the risk or the level of the threat currently.

00:59:14.720 I mean, these days in whatever, I mean, September 25.

00:59:17.580 But I think that the level of threats are always there and has to be very, very well looked upon to make sure that they will not enter the country, will not enter the houses.

00:59:28.640 I think that their activity is still vivid.

00:59:31.460 It's not a thing that died.

00:59:32.900 It didn't die in Iran.

00:59:34.180 And by the way, the only country that I'm aware of that is conducting terror activity as a country, as a state.

00:59:40.740 We know organizations.

00:59:41.600 But we do not know many countries that are conducting terror activity outside of the country.

00:59:46.160 So it can go against anyone.

00:59:48.700 And they did that, right?

00:59:50.200 They did that all over.

00:59:51.960 I mean, all over Europe.

00:59:53.020 I mean, all over Latin America or even in the USA itself.

00:59:56.720 And we'd help to disrupt these ones as well.

01:00:00.120 So I think that the level of threat is still there, either from terror groups that are not liking what you do.

01:00:07.240 I think that England or the UK should be looking at these because now when you're dealing so openly and maybe in a different manner with legal immigration or illegal immigration,

01:00:20.240 and you eventually target some countries, I mean, this could create kind of hate crimes coming in your direction.

01:00:27.080 This is happening in the USA right now.

01:00:29.240 I mean, you see what happened, unfortunately, I mean, to Charlie Kirk, I mean, a few days ago, I mean, in the USA.

01:00:34.660 This is because of maybe opinions and maybe other threats.

01:00:39.060 But I truly believe that in order to counter all that, you need a super high level of intelligence internationally.

01:00:45.780 I mean, I'm not sure that the threats will come always from the streets of Manchester, Liverpool or whatever, I mean, Glasgow.

01:00:54.060 I mean, I think it could come from all over the world.

01:00:56.260 I mean, inside your own country, it needs to be worked upon very intensely, I mean, to my understanding.

01:01:02.500 It's because, Yossi, as we look at the world now, and you're probably going to push back against this,

01:01:07.120 but to a lot of people, the world looks ever more unstable.

01:01:10.860 It looks ever more dangerous.

01:01:12.220 We've gone from going from a unipolar world to a multipolar world.

01:01:16.100 Do you think that we've become more unsafe in terms of terrorism, in terms of those types of threats with the world as it is now, as opposed to how it used to be?

01:01:25.880 I'm not sure that I will counter that.

01:01:26.780 I think that the world is getting crazy.

01:01:28.340 I mean, in simple words, I see a different translation of hatred or hate crimes, right?

01:01:34.960 And again, I mean, going to Charlie Kirk, what is it?

01:01:37.220 Okay, it's a young killer, I mean, 22 years of age, that is taking an own decision.

01:01:44.580 It does not belong to an organization.

01:01:46.540 It does not belong to a country.

01:01:48.440 I mean, it's not like he's being recruited by Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, or whatever it is.

01:01:53.980 I mean, he is working for his own by his own, as far as I can understand it today.

01:01:58.360 So this kind of instability or this kind of hate crimes, I mean, can happen all over. 0.98

01:02:06.060 And I think that, yes, we, if I may, as adults, I mean, we have to make sure that our kids and youngsters are not being fed by this kind of stupidity and hatred, I mean, through the social media. 0.55

01:02:20.760 I mean, social media become to be kind of a tool, I mean, to recruit people without being part of any organization anymore. 0.95

01:02:27.500 I mean, you don't have to be, you don't have a salary, you don't have a card, you don't have a union.

01:02:32.320 You just say, I believe in what they say, and I will act.

01:02:36.020 And this is kind of a new threat that is being, I think, placed in our cities.

01:02:40.400 In our region, in Israel, I think that when the war will be ended, and I hope that the war will be ended soon, I listen very carefully to what they say in the USA today, right?

01:02:50.880 But Witkoff has just announced that we may have, we may be have a kind of a solution soon, I mean, to end the war in Gaza.

01:02:58.460 I hope that the war in Gaza will be ended when all these hostages will be eventually returned fully to the state of Israel. 0.95

01:03:05.200 And this may be kind of a declaration, I mean, to the end of the war in Gaza.

01:03:08.860 Meanwhile, we are defeating a lot of terrorists in our region.

01:03:12.960 Meanwhile, we are defeating a lot of the Iranian capabilities in their territories. 0.99

01:03:17.100 Meanwhile, the army, the Syrian army does not exist anymore.

01:03:20.520 Meanwhile, we conduct, I would say, quietly, maybe, a kind of a potential peace treaty with other neighbors in the region, i.e. Syria, i.e. Saudi Arabia, sometime in the future.

01:03:34.500 So in the end of the war, our territory, I believe, our region will be safer from these huge organizations.

01:03:42.300 It is differently translated, I mean, to Europe or to the USA or even inside Israel when you see this kind of less safe environment because of people do not like the others rather than being part of their organization.

01:04:00.080 The polarization, as you correctly said, is huge.

01:04:03.400 I mean, you don't, I mean, you see that, I mean, polarized, I mean, all over.

01:04:06.940 I mean, it is polarized in Israel, unfortunately, right now.

01:04:09.300 It is super polarized in the UK, I believe right now.

01:04:12.140 It is polarized in the USA and in France and in Hungary and in Germany and all over.

01:04:16.760 I mean, you see, I mean, movements that are taking extreme, I mean, either to the right or to the left.

01:04:24.320 And I see more to the right.

01:04:25.600 And maybe because of that and because of, as I said, the wrongly activity inside the social media, we feel less safe.

01:04:41.440 I mean, last holidays, I mean, our New Year's just ended and I've been to your synagogue here in London.

01:04:50.600 I spent the holidays here in London.

01:04:54.700 And the rabbi of the synagogue gave a lecture and said, this is the absolute extreme times that we are now facing.

01:05:08.740 And the level of anti-Semitism is the highest since the World War II.

01:05:15.220 That was his declaration.

01:05:17.040 That's the way Jewish people feel now in the UK.

01:05:20.600 And they're worried about themselves living among the UK for hundreds of years, being part of your everything, integrating into the culture, the music, the history, the leadership.

01:05:34.360 We had even a Jewish prime minister in England one day.

01:05:37.220 Benjamin Disraeli.

01:05:38.060 Absolutely.

01:05:39.400 I mean, I was there, the audience, listening to the rabbi, saying that or declaring that.

01:05:44.820 I think this is something that we have to think about.

01:05:46.840 Why is it, actually, that Jewish people in 2025, when the UK is declaring itself one of the strongest democracies on earth, okay, feel that way. 0.98

01:05:56.780 Why is it?

01:05:57.640 Is it organized terrorism?

01:05:59.920 I don't think so.

01:06:01.260 So what is it?

01:06:01.860 And I think that is the sense or that is the sentiment when the people do feel less safe all over the world.

01:06:09.160 It is exactly the same spirit or the same sentiment that people do believe that maybe my neighbor doesn't like what I think.

01:06:15.020 Maybe he believes that I belong to the different sector and therefore he's able to either create a hate crime.

01:06:22.260 We see that a lot.

01:06:23.060 I'm working a lot with other countries, I mean, to counter not only terrorism but antisemitism.

01:06:27.780 And we see that rising, I mean, all the time.

01:06:31.180 What is it all about?

01:06:33.120 Yeah, some would say it's about the war in Gaza.

01:06:35.600 I would say it's not really connected only to that.

01:06:38.780 I mean, there are other elements that are happening, I mean, around us in our society that are breaching our life.

01:06:45.140 And I think that it needs either a national or global thinking, I mean, to counter all that and to tell the people, I mean, openly, yeah, we may be different.

01:06:58.620 We may think differently.

01:06:59.740 We may have different thoughts about different issues that may be even super important for you or to you, but we're not your enemies.

01:07:07.360 Well, we've been trying to make that point on this show for some time now, and I think Charlie Kirk's assassination really focused the mind for a lot of people on that because, as you say, a lot of young people have been badly, badly miseducated when it comes to these issues and the idea that people who disagree can have a conversation.

01:07:26.620 And that's the way to adjudicate these disagreements.

01:07:28.960 Absolutely.

01:07:29.300 We saw this since Charlie's assassination.

01:07:32.640 There was a guy who shot at an ice facility in America.

01:07:37.360 Killed three people he was allegedly trying to defend, detainees in the facility.

01:07:44.640 And it's one of the things that makes, I think, people extra, feel extra unsafe, is that, and I had this realisation on the day, that all of this was possible always.

01:07:56.000 The sniper rifles or a rifle with a scope, they've been there for 200 years.

01:08:00.420 200 years.

01:08:01.140 So anyone could have been doing this every day for the last 200 years.

01:08:04.600 And the only reason they haven't is we didn't have the culture and the technology and whatever else is going on to allow people to be brainwashed in this way and then to go and act in this way.

01:08:15.160 Because the physical ability to do this has always been there.

01:08:18.340 Correct.

01:08:18.840 And will be there, provided the United States has the same rules around guns that it does now.

01:08:23.520 Absolutely, yes.

01:08:24.500 I totally agree with you and I cherish what you do here in your show.

01:08:28.020 And I think that the one and a half million subscribers that we have here, and inshallah, you will have more.

01:08:35.360 I mean, two million.

01:08:36.620 And more than that.

01:08:37.780 I think that the messaging that you are providing the world is super important.

01:08:42.260 I wish that everybody will do the same that you do.

01:08:44.020 Why is it?

01:08:45.620 Because it's super important for the youngsters to listen to you.

01:08:48.200 I mean, they have abandoned, I believe, like proper, I mean, conservative TV channels, I mean, which is not using the same methods as the social media.

01:08:57.280 But you in between, I think that you can make the corrections needed.

01:09:01.820 And they're needed.

01:09:02.780 And they're needed so badly.

01:09:03.860 I mean, you see it all over.

01:09:05.740 And, yeah, the bad influence is not behind the corner.

01:09:10.820 It's in your living room.

01:09:12.600 And when you are not controlling your youngsters and you are not controlling the kids and you are not, like, forbidding something from happening or to being transmitted because everything is in the open.

01:09:24.500 You can do everything.

01:09:26.200 I mean, in the web.

01:09:27.620 I mean, GPT or any other questions they want to ask.

01:09:31.380 I mean, you can do and you can go into different directions and everything that has to be controlled should must or must be controlled even better these days.

01:09:39.540 I totally believe in it.

01:09:41.000 And I'm, together with you, I'm absolutely worried about it.

01:09:44.740 And I think it's very important on the final note because people, when they talk about Charlie Kirk, understandably, he was a political figure.

01:09:51.220 He was a huge figure on social media.

01:09:54.720 But let's put all of that to one side.

01:09:57.260 Charlie was a father of two.

01:09:59.900 He was a 31-year-old man.

01:10:02.020 His wife is pregnant with their third child and he was murdered in front of her.

01:10:06.680 That is the most important thing.

01:10:08.900 I didn't know that.

01:10:09.840 That is the most important thing.

01:10:11.160 It's not politics.

01:10:12.280 It's not social media.

01:10:13.400 It's not left, right or anything else.

01:10:15.100 It's that a young man lost his life.

01:10:16.640 I listened to her twice.

01:10:17.040 I totally agree with you.

01:10:18.100 And I listened to her twice.

01:10:19.120 Very impressive woman. 0.88

01:10:20.580 The first time she said, Charlie's words will be echoed even higher now, number one, which is super important because he was trying to make a conversation.

01:10:29.900 Another conflict.

01:10:31.220 And this is the only way to solve things, even if we are different.

01:10:34.800 And number two is, she said, I forgive the killer.

01:10:38.740 That means, whoo, a lot.

01:10:40.980 I mean, from within.

01:10:42.140 That shows who they are.

01:10:44.200 Exactly.

01:10:44.960 And I mean, sending her my best condolences and to strengthen what she is doing.

01:10:52.860 I would be very happy to help exactly messaging all that, saying that we need to correct all that with open conversation and not conflicting.

01:11:02.760 And by the way, politicians all over the world, I mean, not all of them, but part of them, are part of it.

01:11:10.680 Of course.

01:11:10.960 They're trying to polarize us so to win the next elections.

01:11:15.980 Okay?

01:11:16.180 If I'm telling you that he's so bad, I mean, you will never vote for him, even if you thought that he's not that bad.

01:11:21.500 But now they are presenting you as whatever.

01:11:25.720 I mean, the worst person on earth.

01:11:27.260 And no one will eventually dare voting for you.

01:11:31.120 And this is something that has to be stopped as well.

01:11:32.980 I mean, I refer to that in one of the podcasts in Israel, I mean, recently.

01:11:37.460 And I said that the thing that we believe that in order to win the other side's hearts, okay, to bring people from one side to our side, to our direction, is to polarize us one against the other is super wrong.

01:11:52.880 And I think that it can create more than different thoughts.

01:11:58.240 It can create hate and then crime and then hatred on a certain level and then crime again.

01:12:08.400 So it's a kind of a closed circle that will eventually, I mean, it doesn't let the youngsters or the others to go away from this circle because this is only what they consume.

01:12:19.260 And this consumption, I mean, should be eventually corrected and stopped in a way.

01:12:24.140 I'm not sure if I have the entire method to do that, but I think that you have.

01:12:27.700 No one knows how.

01:12:29.120 But anyway, Jos, it's been great talking to you.

01:12:31.100 We're going to ask you questions from our supporters in a second.

01:12:33.520 Before we do, what is the one thing that we are not talking about at the global level, at the society level that we should be?

01:12:40.500 I think that we have to talk about unity.

01:12:43.700 And I think that what we, in light of what we have discussed, I mean, just recently, I mean, this is one thing that we have to be discussing in length and in depth, is unity.

01:12:54.400 I think that we are much more similar than it seems.

01:12:57.400 I think that we have much more in common than it looks like.

01:13:00.620 And I think that we have to prefer our unification rather than polarization.

01:13:06.560 And this is something that we don't discuss enough, not in Israel, not outside of the state of Israel.

01:13:10.840 Yes, you can't. Thank you very much.

01:13:13.100 Head on over to Substack, where we ask you your questions.

01:13:17.180 Did Mossad think that Saddam Hussein had a weapon of mass destruction before the invasion in 2003?

01:13:22.440 We'll see you next time.

01:13:52.440 Thank you.

01:13:56.860 Thank you.

01:14:04.720 Thank you.

TRIGGERnometry - October 01, 2025

How We Got Iran's Nuclear Secrets - Ex Mossad Director Yossi Cohen

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