Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen has revealed for the first time that Africa was the geographic area where spies from his agency carried out their "dress rehearsal" for the now famous operation in which they broke into Iran's secret nuclear archives in January 2018.
The operation changed the course of history as it was the impetus for then-first-term US President Donald Trump to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal shortly after the operation's results were revealed in Spring 2018.
In turn, Trump pulling out of the deal and the failure of the parties involved to reach a new deal are viewed by most as leading to the two wars with Iran in June 2025 and early 2026, and eventually to the new deal between second-term Trump and Iran just signed on June 17.
In the 2023 book "Target Tehran," a vast majority of the details are revealed regarding the Mossad operation, with Cohen himself adding some new details in his 2025 book, "The Sword of Freedom," but one of the most critical details had still been left out until now: where the dress rehearsal took place.
While seemingly one of many small details, this one was actually crucial.
Mission impossible: Archives breached, nuclear documents snatched
The ability of dozens of Mossad agents to breach the highly protected Iranian nuclear archives facility without setting off any alarms or alerting Iranian authorities for the 6 hours and 29 minutes they were there and about two hours afterward, made it possible for them to seize whole bookshelves of the original nuclear documents and for every single member of the team to escape unharmed.
This was only possible because they were able to practice on a full life-sized model of the Iranian nuclear archive facility, including huge heavy steel safes which required flamethrowers reaching 3600 degrees to cut through them.
Despite numerous requests by The Jerusalem Post over the years, the identity of the geographic area was always kept under wraps due to various security and diplomatic concerns.
It is unclear what changed that allowed Cohen to disclose this detail now, but part of the change could relate to the intense beating that Iranian security and terror entities took during the recent war.
The report was also carried by Maghreb Online.
Interestingly, Morocco joined the Abraham Accords during Cohen's term as Mossad chief, and there could have been overlap between the dress rehearsal and during the time that he was negotiating secretly with them about normalization, though the Post has no evidence that Morocco was the country where the dress rehearsal took place, and Israel has quiet relations with many countries viewed as off the radar.
In his interview, Cohen explained that such a large rehearsal in Israel of such a specific site could have drawn too much attention.