Mossad chief: Israel has duty to ensure Iran cannot restart nuclear program

At spy agency award ceremony, David Barnea says Islamic Republic will break out to bomb ‘as soon as it is allowed,’ says there must not be another ‘bad deal’

Mossad chief David Barnea said on Tuesday that Israel must “ensure” Iran doesn’t restart its nuclear program, six months after the IDF struck the Islamic Republic’s atomic facilities during a 12-day war.

A country sworn to Israel’s destruction, such as Iran, which has “enriched uranium levels that have no explanation other than realizing its desire for a military nuclear weapon, is a country that will break out as soon as it is allowed,” Barnea said at an award ceremony for Mossad intelligence agents in Jerusalem.

“The idea of continuing to develop a nuclear bomb still beats in their hearts. We bear responsibility to ensure that the nuclear project, which has been gravely damaged, in close cooperation with the Americans, will never be activated,” he said.

The outgoing spy chief, who will end his term in June 2026, praised Israel’s surprise opening strikes of the war, which he suggested showed the vast amount of intelligence Israeli spies had collected on Iran.

“Even though the ayatollahs’ regime awoke, in a single moment, to discover that Iran had been entirely exposed and infiltrated, Iran still hasn’t abandoned its ambition to destroy the State of Israel,” Barnea said.

Expressing his skepticism of any diplomatic solution with Tehran, Barnea added: “Iran believes it can deceive the world once again and implement yet another bad nuclear deal. We did not and will not allow a bad deal to come to fruition.”

Western powers have long accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons and sought to prevent it from acquiring them.

Iran has consistently denied seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it has enriched uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities, and expanded its ballistic missile capabilities. When the war began, Israel said Iran had recently taken steps toward weaponization.

Iran said over 1,000 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the June war. It retaliated by launching over 500 ballistic missiles and around 1,100 drones at Israel, which killed 32 people and wounded over 3,000 in Israel, according to health officials and hospitals.

In his first term, US President Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 landmark deal, opposed by Israel, limiting Iran’s enrichment of nuclear material in exchange for sanctions relief.

Iran and the US began negotiations for a new agreement in April, mediated by Oman, but those talks ended when Israel launched its attack at the end of a 60-day deadline set by Trump for a deal to end Tehran’s uranium enrichment.

Israel said its sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites, and ballistic missile program was necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from realizing its avowed plan to destroy the Jewish state.

The US joined in with its own strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities.

Trump has repeatedly said the American attack obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, but the full extent of the damage remains unclear.

The Pentagon has said the strikes delayed Iran’s nuclear program by between one and two years, contradicting an initial classified US intelligence report that, according to American media, found the setback was only a few months.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has previously rebuffed Trump’s claims that Iran’s nuclear program had been destroyed, telling him to “keep dreaming.”