Prosecutors filed charges Thursday against a 22-year-old from Beersheba suspected of spying for Iran during his mandatory military service.
The suspect, Rafael Reuveni, allegedly maintained contact with an Iranian intelligence agent since September. The handler recruited him to take videos in a park near his home, and photograph a bus station and a shopping mall in the southern city, according to the indictment.
He was arrested in late October by police, based on intelligence collected by the Shin Bet, and was indicted in the Beersheba District Court on charges of maintaining contact with a foreign agent and passing intelligence to an enemy.
Reuveni was also accused of sending his handler mostly fabricated information about the army base where he served, after the agent asked him about the base’s personnel and emergency procedures.
The defendant told his handler the truth about his specific job at the base, but when asked to substantiate the details with video evidence, he refused, and the two began to argue about payment, prosecutors said.
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Later on, the agent asked Reuveni to provide him information on his fellow soldiers at base in exchange for NIS 50 ($15) per person. The defendant sent him a false list of 16 contacts, none of them soldiers at the base.
Aside from passing intelligence to his handler, Reuveni was also enlisted to carry out various missions. At one point, the agent sent him to a supermarket to buy a pack of cigarettes, which he then was told to empty out and hide in a park alongside a 20-shekel bill with a note that read: “Go to Jordan.”
He was also allegedly dispatched to Rishon Lezion to check whether a gun hidden in a location — presumably by another Iranian-recruited Israeli agent — was real or a toy. He refused to pass the gun to another person, but agreed to hide it in a nearby bush for a payment of NIS 2,000 ($614).
In total, Reuveni received roughly $2,700 from the Iranian agent, which was transferred to his digital wallet, prosecutors said. The State Attorney’s Office requested that he be held in custody until the end of legal proceedings.
An Iranian flag flutters in front of the Iranian Consulate, where Iranian diplomats meet counterparts from Germany, Britain and France for renewed nuclear talks, in Istanbul, Turkey, on July 25, 2025. (Yasin AKGUL / AFP)
Reuveni is one of dozens of Israeli citizens who have been arrested and charged with espionage for the Islamic Republic over the past two years, as cases pile up in which Iranian agents have promised people money in exchange for their services as spies.
Authorities have arrested and charged a growing number of alleged spies, most of whom are ordinary civilians contacted by Iranian intelligence operatives online. Most of the accused start out with innocuous tasks that gradually grow into more serious offenses, like intelligence gathering and assassination plots.
The effort appears to be part of a mass recruitment scheme by Tehran to gather intelligence on Israel’s alleged nuclear and military sites, as well as key Israeli figures such as defense officials and top scientists.
The growing number of alleged Iranian agents has prompted Israel to open up a new wing for them in Haifa’s Damon prison, where lawyers have claimed they are subject to unusually harsh conditions. Though dozens have been arrested and charged, only a handful have been convicted, as the cases make their way through the justice system.
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