Israel’s recent arrests of almost 30 mostly Jewish citizens who allegedly spied for Iran in nine covert cells has caused alarm in the country and points to Tehran’s biggest effort in decades to infiltrate its arch-foe, four Israeli security sources said.
Among the unfulfilled goals of the alleged cells was the assassination of an Israeli nuclear scientist and former military officials, while one group gathered information on military bases and air defenses, the Shin Bet security service has said. Last week, the agency and Israel’s police said a father and son team from a northern Druze village had passed on details of Israeli force movements including in the Golan Heights where they lived.
The arrests follow repeated efforts by Iranian intelligence operatives over the past two years to recruit ordinary Israelis to gather intelligence and carry out attacks in exchange for money, the four serving and former military and security officials said.
The sources asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
“There is a large phenomenon here,” said Shalom Ben Hanan, a former top Shin Bet official, referring to what he called the surprising number of Jewish citizens who knowingly agreed to work for Iran against the state with intelligence gathering or planning sabotage and attacks.
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Shin Bet and the police did not respond to requests for comment. Iran’s foreign ministry did not respond to questions.
Security forces arrest two residents of the northern Druze village of Mas’ade on suspicion spying for Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, in a photo cleared for publication on December 6, 2024. (Israel Police)
In a statement sent to media after the wave of arrests, Iran’s UN mission did not confirm or deny seeking to recruit Israelis and said that “from a logical standpoint” any such efforts by Iranian intelligence services would focus on non-Iranian and non-Muslim individuals to lessen suspicion.
At least two suspects were from the ultra-Orthodox community, police and the Shin Bet have said.
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Unlike Iranian espionage operations in previous decades that recruited a high-profile businessman and a former cabinet minister, the new alleged spies were largely people on the fringes of Israeli society, including recent immigrants, an army deserter, and a convicted sex offender, conversations with the sources, court records, and official statements show.
Much of their activity was limited to spraying anti-Netanyahu or anti-government graffiti on walls and damaging cars, Shin Bet has said.
Nonetheless, the scale of the arrests and involvement of so many Jewish Israelis, in addition to Arab citizens, has caused concern in Israel at a time when it remains at war with Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza and when a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah remains fragile.
The Shin Bet on October 21 said the espionage activities were “among the most severe the state of Israel has known.”
The arrests also follow a wave of attempted hits and kidnappings linked to Tehran in Europe and the United States.
The unusual decision to provide detailed public accounts of the alleged plots was a move by Israel’s security services to signal both to Iran and potential saboteurs inside Israel that they would be caught, Ben Hanan said.
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“You want to alert the public. And you also want to make an example of people that may also have intentions or plans to cooperate with the enemy,” he said.
Military personnel stand near the flag-draped coffin of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a top nuclear scientist allegedly killed in an Israeli intelligence operation, during a funeral ceremony in Tehran, Iran, November 30, 2020. (Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)
Israel has achieved major intelligence successes over the past few years in a shadow war with its regional foe, including allegedly killing a top nuclear scientist. With the recent arrests Israel has “so far” thwarted Tehran’s efforts to respond, one active military official said.
Israel has been in direct conflict with Iran’s proxies since war erupted last year when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged across southern communities on October 7, 2023, slaughtering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages to Gaza.
Iran has been weakened after Hezbollah initiated a conflict with Israel following Hamas’s October 7 massacre, leading to the elimination of most of the terror group’s leadership and military infrastructure, and after the related fall of Tehran’s ally, former president Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks against the Jewish state since last April, after the second of which Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes that crippled the Islamic Republic’s air defense systems.
Social media recruits
Iranian intelligence agencies often find potential recruits on social media platforms, Israel Police said in a video released in November warning of ongoing infiltration attempts.
The recruiting efforts are at times direct. One message sent to an Israeli civilian and seen by Reuters promised $15,000 in exchange for information, with an email and number to call.
Iran has also approached expatriate networks of Jews from Caucasus countries living in Canada and the United States, said one of the sources, a former senior official who worked on Israel’s counter-espionage efforts until 2007.
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Israeli authorities have said publicly some of the Jewish suspects were originally from Caucasus countries.
These screenshots released by the Shin Bet on August 8, 2024, show fake social media profiles run by Iranian operatives. (Shin Bet)
Recruited individuals are first assigned innocuous-seeming tasks in return for money, before handlers gradually demand specific intelligence on targets, including about individuals and sensitive military infrastructure, backed by the threat of blackmail, said the former official.
One suspect, Vladislav Viktorson, 30, was arrested on October 14 along with his 18-year-old girlfriend in the city of Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv. He had been jailed in 2015 for sex with minors as young as 14, according to a court indictment from that time.
An acquaintance of Viktorson told Reuters he had told her he had spoken to Iranians using the Telegram messaging app. She said that Viktorson had lied to his handlers about his military experience. The acquaintance declined to be named, citing safety fears.
Igal Dotan, Viktorson’s lawyer, told Reuters he was representing the suspect, adding that the legal process would take time and that his client was being held in tough conditions. Dotan said he could only respond to the current case and had not defended Victorsson in earlier trials.
Shin Bet and police said Viktorson knew he was working for Iranian intelligence, carrying out tasks including spraying graffiti, hiding money, posting flyers, and burning cars in the Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv for which he received over $5,000.
According to the investigation made public by the security services, he was found to have subsequently agreed to carry out an assassination of an Israeli personality, throw a grenade into a house, and also look to obtain a sniper rifle, pistols, and fragmentation grenades.
He recruited his girlfriend, who was tasked with recruiting homeless people to photograph demonstrations, the security services said.