Two young men were charged in court Monday with espionage for Iran, including one who allegedly bought a ticket to Dubai to meet his handler.
The pair were brought before a judge in the Lod Central District Court and indicted on security offenses. The judge issued a gag order barring the publication of details that could identify either of the defendants, despite police having named the pair in an earlier press release.
The main suspect, a 19-year-old from central Israel, was allegedly in contact with an Iranian agent for three months before his arrest in March.
According to the Ynet news site, the main defendant admitted to being fully aware he was interacting with a hostile Iran-linked actor, but nevertheless sought to make money off the contact by providing him with what he claimed was fake intelligence.
The State Attorney’s Office said the young man had already bought a ticket to Dubai by the time of his arrest, and had planned to meet his handler there. Earlier, the Shin Bet and police said he had agreed to undergo “training” in an Arab country.
Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition
by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the terms
He also allegedly provided an Iranian agent with the personal information of his brother, an IDF soldier, and lied about his brother’s position in the army. He created the false impression that his sibling served in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate and had access to sensitive information, prosecutors said.
According to police, several of the suspect’s family members received “threatening messages” from the Iranian agent after the young man disclosed their personal details to him. Despite this, he maintained contact with his handler.
During his interrogation, the young man allegedly incriminated a 21-year-old Israeli, also from the center. The second man is suspected of helping the main defendant forge a document detailing a fake US-Israeli plan to attack Iran, supposedly originating from his brother’s computer.
Justifying their request to keep the pair in custody until convicted, prosecutors said the defendants are highly dangerous, since “the transfer of false information about Israel’s readiness for immediate war could have led to a surprise attack by Iran.”
The main defendant allegedly received tens of thousands of shekels from the agent. Some of the money was paid to him in cryptocurrency, while some was transferred directly to his bank account from a company’s bank account after Iran-linked hackers managed to access its funds, prosecutors added.
The pair are the latest to be arrested on suspicion of spying for the Islamic Republic, a burgeoning phenomenon which the security establishment has struggled to stem, even during the recent war against Iran.
Iranian agents usually start out their recruits with relatively mundane tasks such as vandalism or the filming of public locations, which then escalate into intelligence gathering, and sometimes violence.
Earlier this month, 22-year-old Ami Gaydarov was indicted on severe security charges after he allegedly produced explosive material intended for terror bombings on the orders of an Iranian agent.
Police arrest a Haifa resident for allegedly working for an Iranian agent, in an image published on April 9, 2026. (Israel Police)
The explosive material “was intended for use against a public figure, whose identity is unknown, and for the purpose of an explosion at a bus stop or another place where people were liable to be hurt,” state prosecutors wrote in Gaydarov’s indictment.
In 2025, two Jewish young men from Tiberias were arrested while preparing to fly to Iran for shooting training with the goal of assassinating a senior figure.
A year prior to that, a group of seven young men from Beit Safafa, an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, were nabbed on suspicion of planning to assassinate a prominent scientist and the mayor of a major city.
You appreciate our wartime journalism
You clearly find our careful reporting of the Iran war valuable, at a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.
Your support is essential to continue our work. We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically during this ongoing conflict.
So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6 a month you’ll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel