in Yiddish<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe low-level Iranian operations bear little resemblance to the sophisticated espionage methods Israeli intelligence uses. Instead, they appear to rely more on wide-scale fishing expeditions and luck, according to Israeli security officials and experts.<\/p>\n
One night in May, for example, in outreach that was hardly clandestine, thousands of Israelis received text messages inviting them \u201cto cooperate in the field of intelligence\u201d by contacting an Iranian embassy abroad or an Iranian cyber operative online.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife gets an S.M.S. every other day claiming to be from Iranian intelligence and offering a big reward,\u201d said Shalom Ben Hanan, a former Shin Bet official who is regularly briefed on the matter by the agency. Out of thousands of attempts, if Iran manages to recruit one or two, \u201cthat\u2019s a success,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It is unclear how much harm Iran\u2019s online recruitment efforts have inflicted on Israel, while Israel\u2019s intelligence operations have done great damage to Iran, including contributing to the decapitation of its former leadership. But the Israeli authorities certainly take Iran\u2019s efforts seriously.<\/p>\n
In April, the police and Shin Bet arrested a 22-year-old man from Haifa and charged him with manufacturing explosives as part of a plot to kill a senior Israeli political figure. The accused man experimented with explosions in a parking lot and, at the behest of his Iranian handlers, photographed Haifa\u2019s port and Iranian missile impact sites during the most recent war, the authorities said.<\/p>\n
Another case that raised alarms involved a reserve soldier from Jerusalem who served in the military\u2019s Iron Dome antimissile defense unit. He was accused of providing his handler with the locations of Iron Dome batteries and at least seven air bases. He also provided photographs and videos of Iron Dome\u2019s operating procedures and the names of other potential recruits, according to legal documents.<\/p>\n
The military also arrested two Israeli conscripts serving as air force technicians who had access to sensitive information about Israel\u2019s planes and radar systems. The two sergeants maintained contact with an agent over Telegram for about a year, according to an indictment served by military prosecutors. They were charged with aiding an enemy.<\/p>\n
One of the most sensational and potentially damaging cases of late involved a computer science student from the Haredi community who, with some help from his older brother and AI, is accused of posing as an officer in the military\u2019s vaunted 8200 intelligence unit.<\/p>\n
An agent first contacted the student, Meir Nahum, 24, from the Haredi settlement of Beitar Illit, over Telegram in August, according to the indictment in his case. He then set up another profile and began to correspond with the agent in the name of a fictional 8200 officer.<\/p>\n
Asked if Israel was involved in the 2024 helicopter crash in which the former president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, was killed, Nahum answered in the affirmative. Using ChatGPT, he forged a military document with the 8200 unit\u2019s logo purporting to give more details, according to the indictment and Roi Gavrieli, the police investigator in the case. (Iran blamed the crash on bad weather).<\/p>\n
In December, after the handler asked for names of Iranians collaborating with Israel, Mr. Nahum turned to his brother for help.<\/p>\n
They found the details of a random Iranian citizen and passed them on to the handler, claiming the man had served as a lookout for an Israeli attack that killed two Iranian military figures last June, according to the indictment and Mr. Gavrieli.<\/p>\n
In correspondence later uncovered by the Israeli authorities, the Iranian handler claimed that the citizen identified by the brothers was interrogated, then released and cleared of any suspicion.<\/p>\n
The brothers were arrested in January and charged in March. The police said they were paid a total of about 100,000 shekels, or more than $35,000, in digital currency.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir sole motivation was money,\u201d Mr. Gavrieli said by telephone. It is unclear if Iranian intelligence fell for the brothers\u2019 scam at any stage, he said. But he added that the claim that Israel was involved in killing President Raisi alone could have prompted revenge attacks or even started a war.<\/p>\n
Ariel Atari, a lawyer representing the Nahum brothers, said they don\u2019t deny contact with an Iranian agent, which is a crime, but he disputed the prosecution\u2019s claim that their actions had endangered Israel.<\/p>\n
On the contrary, Mr. Atari argued, the brothers helped Israel by \u201cgetting money out of the Iranians in return for false information.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Israeli authorities do not view it that way. The brothers face another court hearing on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The white-bearded rabbi had an unusual message for his followers in Israel. Instead of presenting a teaching from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1448,113882,90403,14670,60,2601,9,11,10,7714,8035,113881,89576,4015],"class_list":["post-299792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-ebrahim","tag-espionage-and-intelligence-services","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-jews-and-judaism","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-orthodox-judaism","tag-rabbis","tag-raisi","tag-shin-bet","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}