In April 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had obtained more than 100,000 documents and videos from a secret nuclear archive in Tehran. The material, he said, documented Iran’s Project Amad, an organized effort to develop nuclear weapons. The archive was evidence about Iran’s past weapons-related work; the International Atomic Energy Agency’s separate assessment found that the main structured effort ended in 2003, while some activities continued later.
What Israel presented
Netanyahu displayed files and slides at a public presentation in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2018. Israel said the archive included documents, plans, presentations, photographs, and videos relating to the design of nuclear weapons and their possible delivery by missile. Netanyahu’s presentation was reported contemporaneously, and his later United Nations speech said Israel had shared material with the United States and the IAEA.
Israel’s account identified Project Amad as the central program in the archive. Its public presentation described plans for warhead design and integration with missiles. The archive helped expose the scope of Iran’s earlier weapons work and challenged Tehran’s denials that it had ever pursued such a program.
What the IAEA concluded
The IAEA had investigated possible military dimensions before the archive became public. Its December 2015 final assessment concluded that Iran had conducted a coordinated range of activities relevant to developing a nuclear explosive device before the end of 2003, and that some activities took place afterward. It found no credible indications of such activities after 2009 and no evidence that undeclared nuclear material was involved in the activities it assessed.
That distinction matters: the archive strengthened the record of Iran’s past organized weapons work, but the files alone did not establish a current decision to build a weapon or prove every Israeli claim about Iran’s post-2003 intentions. The IAEA’s findings and the Israeli presentation answer different questions. For the broader safeguards context, see the category on Iran’s nuclear program.