CIA May Have Helped Mossad Agents Escape Iran After Nuclear Heist - Book

By Staff, Agencies

Former CIA director and US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, in his new book “Never Give an Inch,” heavily implies that the CIA help Mossad agents escape from Iran in February 2018 after those agents had pulled off the heist of the century by seizing Iran's secret nuclear archive, without fully confirming it.

Describing one of several interactions with then Mossad director Yossi Cohen, but without giving the exact date, Pompeo recounts hearing from an aide, "Mr. Director, [Mossad] Director [Yossi] Cohen needs to speak with you immediately."

"The call from Yossi Cohen, the head of the Mossad, arrived shortly after I had stepped off a plane in a European capital. I turned around and went back onboard, where we had communications equipment suitable for a classified conversation with the leader of ‘Israel's’ intelligence agency," writes Pompeo.

Next, Pompeo says, "The voice on the other end was calm but serious: 'Mike, we just had a team complete a very important mission, and now I'm having a bit of trouble extracting some of them. Can I get your help?'"

"Whenever Yossi called, I took it. He did the same for me...I was there to help our friends, no questions asked, no matter the risks. My people swung into action across the world. We connected with his team, and within twenty-four hours we had guided them to safe houses.”

"Within the next two days, they were back in their home countries without the world ever knowing that one of the most significant clandestine operations ever conducted was now complete," recounts Pompeo.

Although Pompeo does not name the operation or the time period, his description of "one of the most significant clandestine operations ever conducted" hits spot on with the 2018 Iran nuclear archives operation.

Moreover, Cohen has previously said that while all of the dozens of Mossad agents involved eventually escaped safely, there were situations where their lives were in peril and where Iranian security forces were not far behind catching them in a wild chase.

If the CIA was involved, this would be the first public acknowledgment that the US was more deeply connected and at an earlier date to the nuclear archive heist.

To date, the Jerusalem Post has reported that 'Israel' and Cohen updated Pompeo and the CIA much earlier than other allies and the general public, but there has been no previous report about direct CIA involvement in the operation, even if only for assisting with extraction.

There were other major reported ‘Israeli’ operations during Pompeo's tenure with Trump.

But the other major publicly known operations: sabotaging nuclear facilities at Natanz in July 2020 and assassinating Iran nuclear chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020, were both when Pompeo was no longer CIA director [he switched to the State Department in April 2018.]