Iran has denied as “laughably absurd” a detailed Israeli claim that intelligence agents stole clandestine Iranian documents this past winter that reveal what Israel has called Iran’s extensive past research on nuclear bombs.

The Iranian denial, issued by the country’s United Nations mission, was in response to articles in The New York Times and other publications in recent days about the detailed claim by Israel, which considers Iran its most dangerous foreign threat.

The Times article, published in Monday’s print editions, and similar accounts in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, were based on a partial viewing of the documents by journalists from those publications at the invitation of the Israeli government.

Israeli officials also provided new details on how they said the documents had been obtained — through a secret raid on a Tehran warehouse on Jan. 31 by agents of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, equipped with blowtorches.