IRNA - Mossad had a plan to assassinate 15 Iranian scholars and spend two billion dollars to attack Iran, wrote a Zionist journalist in his latest book.

'In May 2003, the deputy head of the Mossad presented a top secret plan to the reclusive Israeli spy agency�s senior leadership,' wrote Politico on Monday, adding, 'The plan, the product of an intensive four-month effort, was an ultra-secret strategy to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.'

The fact that the Zionists have had plans to assassinate the Iranian scientists and to sabotage Iranian nuclear centers have been reiterated several times by the Iranian authorities.

Ronen Bergman revealed Israel's plan about the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scholars and their air raid plan on Iran, in his 'Rise and Kill First: The Inside Story and Secret Operations of Israel's Assassination Program'.

On January 14, 2007, Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, a 44-year-old nuclear scientist working at the Isfahan uranium plant was a victim of the Israelis.

On January 12, 2010, Masoud Alimohammadi left his home in a North Tehran neighborhood and walked towards his car. As he opened his car door, a booby-trapped motorcycle that was parked nearby exploded, killing him.

On November 29, 2010, two motorcyclists blew up the cars of two senior figures in the Iranian nuclear project by attaching limpet mines to them and speeding away. Dr. Majid Shahriari was killed by the blast in his Peugeot 206.

Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani and his wife who was also in the car, managed to escape his Peugeot 206 before it exploded just outside Shahid Beheshti University.

Referring to Israel's prime minister's visit to the US, Politico wrote, 'As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plots with US President Donald Trump against an Iranian nuclear agreement that both men have trashed as nothing more than a pathway to a bomb, it�s worth looking back at this episode to understand how Israel�s spymasters think about the problem.'

Politico wrote, ''The starting assumption is that a technologically advanced state with a wealth of resources like Iran, which seeks to attain an atomic bomb, will succeed in doing so at the end of the day,' began Tamir Pardo, the right-hand man to the Mossad�s legendary director at the time, Meir Dagan. 'In other words, an immediate halt to the project can only be the result of a change of mind or a change in the identity of the political echelon in Iran.''

Quoting Pardo Politico continued, �In this situation, Israel has three options. One: to conquer Iran. The second: to bring about a change in the regime in Iran. The third: to convince the current political echelon that the price they�ll pay to continue the nuclear project is greater than what they can gain by stopping it.�

'Since the first and second options were unrealistic, only the third option remained�to take overt and covert action that would put so much pressure on the ayatollahs that they would decide to simply give up. 'In the meantime, until they reach the conclusion that it�s not worth it for them,' Dagan said in summary, 'we must employ a number of means to delay again and again their attainment of a bomb so that at the breaking point, they will not yet be armed with the weapon.''

Politico wrote that Dagan okayed Pardo�s plan and developed it into a five-pronged approach: 'heavy international diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, support to Iranian minorities and opposition groups to help them topple the regime, the disruption of consignments of equipment and raw materials for the nuclear program and, finally, covert ops, including the sabotage of installations and targeted killings of key figures in the program.'

'The breadth of this effort, particularly its covert elements, including the assassination of Iranian scientists, and the startling success it achieved, has never been told before,' Politico wrote, and added, 'The idea behind this integrated effort�'a series of pinpoint operations meant to change reality,' in Dagan�s words�was to delay the project as much as possible so that before Iran could build an atom bomb, either the sanctions would cause a grave economic crisis that would force Iran�s leaders to drop the project or the opposition parties would be strong enough to overthrow the government.'

'In support of these efforts, a quadrilateral collaboration between the CIA, the NSA, the Mossad and the Israeli military intelligence agency, AMAN, was formalized by way of a cooperation pact between the two countries� respective leaders at the time, American President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that included revealing sources and methods. This was a very unusual deal in intelligence relations between the countries, even among those who maintain close ties with one another.'

Politico said that Bergman's book wrote that American intelligence agencies and the Department of the Treasury, together with the Mossad�s Spear (Tsiltsal) unit, which specializes in economic warfare, launched a comprehensive campaign of economic measures to impair the Iranian nuclear project. The two countries also embarked on an effort to identify Iranian purchases of equipment for the project, particularly items that Iran could not manufacture itself, and to stop the shipments from reaching their destination. This continued for years, through the Bush administration and into that of Barack Obama. But the Iranians were tenacious.'

'In June 2009, the Mossad, together with US and French intelligence, discovered that they had built another secret uranium enrichment facility, this one buried under a mountain near Qom. Three months later, President Obama made a dramatic announcement exposing and condemning the hidden enrichment plant, and the economic sanctions were tightened further. Covertly, joint sabotage operations also managed to produce a series of breakdowns in Iranian equipment supplied to the nuclear project�computers stopped working, transformers burned out, centrifuges simply didn�t work properly. In the largest and most important joint operation by the Americans and the Israelis against Iran, dubbed �Olympic Games,� computer viruses, one of which became known as Stuxnet, caused severe damage to the nuclear project�s uranium enrichment machinery.'

Politico continued, 'The last component of Dagan�s plan�the targeted killing of scientists�was implemented by the Mossad on its own, since Dagan, according to several sources, including some high-ranking officials in the CIA, was aware that the United States would not agree to participate. The Mossad compiled a list of 15 key researchers as targets for elimination.'

'Assassinating scientists, whatever they are working on, is an illegal act under American law, and the United States never knew, and did not want to know, about these actions. The Israelis never told the Americans their plans, �not even with a wink and a smile,� said the CIA�s Michael Hayden.'

Referring to the sanctions on Ira, Politico wrote, 'This did not stop Netanyahu from continuing preparations for an open military assault on Iran. It�s not entirely clear whether he ever really intended to execute the plan: Defense Minister Barak maintained, �If it depended on me, Israel would have attacked,� but there are senior officials who believe that Netanyahu�who had the last word�only wanted to make Obama think he intended to attack, in order to steer him to the conclusion that America would inevitably get embroiled in the war anyway, so it would be better for the United States to carry out the attack itself, first, to be able to control the timing.'

It also wrote that the Obama administration feared that an Israeli attack would send the price of oil soaring and that chaos would ensue in the Middle East, harming the president�s chances of reelection in November 2012.

'They ordered the Israeli forces and the intelligence arms to prepare for a huge operation: an all-out air attack in the heart of Iran. Some $2 billion was spent on preparations for the attack and for what the Israelis believed would take place the day after�a counterattack either by the Iranian warplanes and missiles, or by its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. The latter could use either the 50,000 missiles it had stockpiled (by 2018, Israeli intelligence estimated the number had increased to 100,000,' to strike at Israeli targets.