TEHRAN – In a contradictory departure from Israel’s longstanding propaganda, former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen has said Iran is not even close to getting a nuclear weapon, laying bare Tel Aviv’s deceitful campaign against Iran which rests on magnifying Tehran’s alleged threats against Israel. 

“I think that Iran, to this day, is not even close to acquiring a nuclear weapon,” the former Israeli spy chief said. “This is due to longstanding efforts by some forces in the world.”

During his tenure as Mossad chief played a crucial role in Israel’s propaganda against Iran and building the case for U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA. In Early April 2018, just slightly more than a month before former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the JCPOA, Cohen managed to plant a story in western media that Mossad is “100 percent certain” Iran seeking nuclear weapons even while the JCPOA was still in place and that the nuclear deal must be “completely changed or scrapped.”
Cohen called at the time the nuclear deal a “terrible mistake,” saying it allows Iran to keep key elements of its nuclear program intact and will remove other restraints in a few years.

In the time since Israel kept raising alarm bells about Iran getting a nuclear weapon within few months. For instance, in February this year, Israel’s energy minister said it would take Iran around six months to produce enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon. 

So which assessment is correct? None, in short. Because Iran has made it crystal clear that it does not seek to develop a nuclear weapon and its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.