Allied Intelligence — 2026-06-25

Former Mossad Chief Reveals Agency Built Secret Replica of Tehran Nuclear Site in Africa Before 2018 Archive Raid

BLUFCohen's disclosure of a classified operational method to burnish his election credentials hands adversary services a replicable counterintelligence signature at a cost Israel's current leadership did not authorize.

Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen disclosed to The Jerusalem Post that agents rehearsed the January 2018 Tehran archive raid at a full-scale replica of the target facility built in an undisclosed African country, the first public identification of the rehearsal site 12. The replica reproduced the building layout and heavy steel safes requiring cutting tools heated to 3,600 degrees to breach, and agents removed approximately 50,000 documents and 55,000 pages on 183 CD-ROMs during the operation 12. Cohen told the Post that staging such a rehearsal inside Israel would have attracted unwanted attention; the Post noted without independent confirmation that Morocco, which joined the Abraham Accords during Cohen's Mossad tenure, maintained concurrent military ties to Israel sufficient to make it a candidate location 1.

Analysis
Cohen held the Africa detail classified for eight years before releasing it on his timeline ahead of October elections, placing himself as the voice of Israeli intelligence continuity against a U.S.-Iran deal his archive operation helped precipitate. The Jerusalem Post is the sole sourcing, and no independent reporting confirms the Morocco inference. Confirming that Mossad replicates targets at full scale in third-country partner states hands adversary counterintelligence a signature to hunt in future operations. The Israeli government may instead have coordinated the release to reduce sensitivity given Iran's degraded security apparatus, with Cohen as an approved channel rather than a unilateral actor.

3 sources