Ex-Mossad chief says ‘we toured’ Iran’s Fordo nuclear site ‘many times’

In remarks at forum in Safed, Yossi Cohen says US bombing of site in 2025 was ‘the fulfillment of all my dreams,’ suggests that 60% uranium enrichment ‘is still far from a bomb’

Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen revealed on Tuesday that Israeli operatives have toured Iran’s Fordo uranium enrichment facility several times in the past.

“We toured the Fordo nuclear site many times in order to understand the site,” he said Tuesday at the Galilee Forum in Safed, according to Hebrew media outlets, without saying when the visits took place or who exactly toured the site.

“[The site] being bombed by the Americans was the fulfillment of all my dreams,” Cohen added.

Fordo, along with the Isfahan and Natanz facilities, was severely damaged by US strikes during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025.

Reports have said the 440 kilograms (970 pounds) of highly enriched uranium stored in the facilities was buried, but Israel reportedly believes that Iran managed to transfer some of it to the nearby Pickaxe Mountain site following that war.

Pickaxe Mountain was not hit then or in the latest war, although US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb it.

Cohen also said Tuesday “that 60% enriched uranium is still far from a bomb,” appearing to contradict experts such as David Albright, who say 60% enriched uranium can potentially be further enriched to weapons grade in a matter of weeks or even days.

No other quotes from Cohen’s remarks during the forum were released to media outlets.

Trump asserted last year that the June 2025 operation “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability and set back its nuclear program by decades. But the exact extent of the damage is unknown.

Prior to last year’s strikes, Iran was enriching uranium to 60 percent, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is far higher than necessary for civilian reactor levels, and close to the 90 percent required to build a nuclear weapon.

In a report aired on Channel 12’s “Uvda” investigative program in January, Cohen said Israel first became aware of what was going on at Fordo in 2010. The Mossad began putting together a grandiose operation that — Cohen said at the time — had it been carried out, “would have been the greatest operation in the history of the country.”

The plan reportedly faced doubts owing to the enormous resources required, its dizzying complexity, the need to mesh delicately synchronized activities, the number of agents required, as well as figuring how to get them out of Iran after the attack went ahead. The Mossad favored using its own home-grown operatives rather than agents enlisted abroad, complicating the mission, which Cohen indicated would have required at least dozens of people.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also the premier at the time, was said to have been very keen on the plan and pushed to move ahead with preparations.

However, by the time Cohen became Mossad chief in 2016, the Obama administration had signed a nuclear pact with Iran. Cohen said that by then, he had lost his own previously strong faith that the operation could be carried out, and so it was shelved, with the focus instead put on the Israel Defense Forces to prepare a strike on Iran.

Responding to the report, the Prime Minister’s Office acknowledged that “attack plans [for Fordo] were developed, some of which were not possible because of October 7,” without elaborating.

Cohen has previously given revealing interviews about Israeli espionage activity in and against Iran.

Days after stepping down as Mossad chief in 2021, he gave an extraordinary interview on Israeli television in which he provided details of such activity. He intimated that his agency blew up Iran’s underground centrifuge facility at Natanz, gave a precise description of the 2018 operation in which the Mossad stole Iran’s nuclear archive from safes in a Tehran warehouse, confirmed that Iran’s assassinated top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh had been in Mossad’s sights for years, and said the regime needs to understand that Israel means what it says when it vows to prevent Iran attaining nuclear weapons.

Speaking on “Uvda” at the time, Cohen indicated that he was deeply familiar with Iran’s various nuclear sites, and said that given the opportunity, he would take his interviewer, journalist Ilana Dayan,to the underground “cellar” at Natanz, where, he said, “the centrifuges used to spin.”