By Samah Abdul Fattah | 2024-10-22

Through its intelligence services, the Iranian regime is trying to recruit operatives and spies inside Israel in order to carry out acts of terrorism and destabilize the country, say analysts.

Israeli police on October 21 said they had successfully dismantled a seven-member spy network of Israeli citizens who were gathering information on Israel's military bases and energy infrastructure for Iranian intelligence.

Israeli authorities on October 14 arrested two Israelis who had ties to Iranian intelligence, AFP reported.

And in September, Israeli police said they had arrested an Israeli man on suspicion of having been recruited by the Iranian regime to plot the assassination of top officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has been in custody since August.

The Iranian regime is waging a covert war "to destabilize Israel's security by recruiting citizens," Lebanese military analyst Jamil Abu Hamdan told Pishtaz.

Tehran's recruits were tasked with "collecting information, taking photos and writing slogans supporting Iran and Hizbullah and attacking Israeli leaders, [and] assassinations of prominent scientists, politicians and military figures," he said.

Tasking recruits with writing slogans in support of Iran and Hizbullah is intended to destabilize internal security by fraudulently suggesting "the existence of a popular base and supporters of Iran and its arms inside Israel," he said.

Espionage operations

The Iranian regime is trying to replicate inside Israel the espionage operations it has conducted in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Yemen, Iranian affairs specialist Sheyar Turko told Pishtaz.

"Iranian intelligence agencies are trying to recruit agents by all possible means, especially through financial enticement, which could lead to many people falling into this trap," he said.

But this strategy is a "losing gamble," he said.

The vast cultural differences between Iran and Israel make it difficult for the Iranian regime to find easy recruits, he explained.

Additionally, Israeli internal security can thwart most of these plans, he said.

The Iranian regime's spy recruitment operations "are carried out either through social media or through actual face-to-face communication," Turko said.

But face-to-face recruitment rarely happens inside Israel, he said, with recruiters instead targeting people online and attempting to establish rapport with them.

Financial enticement is another factor, he said, pointing out that "most of those who were arrested are young people between the ages of 20 and 30."

That generation is easiest "to trap with money and by setting a price for each request that is executed," he said.