When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a dramatic news conference on Monday to accuse Iran of lying about its covert nuclear weapons program, the basis for his presentation was a vast trove of 110,000 files that were, insanely, smuggled out of a secret Iranian storage facility by Israeli intelligence agents.

At a time when some have questioned whether modern Israeli intelligence agencies are living up to their mythical status, this "Mission Impossible"-style operation is quite a message to its skeptics.

Last year, according to Netanyahu, Iran moved the files "to a highly secret location in Tehran" that from the outside looked like "a dilapidated warehouse" but that from the inside, was filled with large safes.

"A few weeks ago, in a great intelligence achievement, Israel obtained half a ton of the material inside these vaults," Netanyahu said.

That's not a misprint — a HALF A TON of materials!

The trove included: 55,000 pages of physical documents in binders; and another 55,000 files in 183 CDs.



The files, he said, included documents, charts, presentations, blueprints, photos, and videos.

He noted that the U.S. had vouched for their authenticity.

The files contained details about Iran's nuclear weapons program, which Iran denied every having existed over the course of negotiations on the nuclear deal.

But as Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies noted, the fact that Israel was able to obtain these documents sends about as important of a psychological blow to Iran as the actual contents.



Spies steal documents all the time. But this was a huge cache. And usually, spy agencies keep quiet after the intelligence is lifted. Not so with the Israelis. They are broadcasting this – making it as much a psychological operation as a revelation about Iran’s nuclear mendacity. — Jonathan Schanzer (@JSchanzer) April 30, 2018



That Israel was able to locate the files, access them, and get them out of the country and safely to Israel sends a huge signal to Iran about the nation's capabilities, pointing to significant assets inside Iran.