Israel has long used the same playbook to recruit informants from enemy societies. Iran is now using it to recruit spies in Israel by exploiting new cracks in Israeli society.
On Sunday, Israeli prosecutors charged two Israeli citizens with espionage for Iran — 19-year-old Sagi Haik, who had been in contact with an Iranian handler for months through Telegram, and 21-year-old Asaf Shitrit, who was allegedly recruited by Haik to carry out tasks under Iranian direction. The months-long contact included plans for the two men to travel to an Arab country for "training," while the younger suspect allegedly told Israeli authorities that he had given "fake intelligence" to his Iranian handler in the form of a forged document detailing plans for a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. Prosecutors warned that if the allegedly fake document had reached Tehran, it could have triggered a preemptive Iranian attack.
It was the latest entry in what Israeli security commentators now describe as a "magefa" — an epidemic. Since October 2023, over 50 indictments have been filed against Israeli citizens for spying on behalf of Iran. In 2025, Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet, reported a 400% increase in Iranian recruitment attempts compared to the previous year, which itself had seen an unprecedented surge.
In 2026, several prominent cases dominated the headlines. In March, an Iron Dome reservist was arrested on suspicion of passing along details on how the missile interceptor system worked in exchange for $1000. During the past month alone, a rash of spy rings was uncovered: two suspected moles in the Israeli Air Force, a thwarted plot to assassinate former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, four active-duty soldiers accused of spying for Iran, and now, the two citizens with the forged documents.
The suspects have ranged in age from 13 to 73. They include ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, Azerbaijani immigrants, a Bnei Brak resident who stalked a nuclear scientist, reservists who filmed Iron Dome batteries, and soldiers arrested during an ongoing "existential" war with Iran.
What is notable about this development isn't the intelligence failure, or even the relative success in uncovering the espionage operations. The more interesting part is the underlying sociological realities that made it possible. Emblematic of this reality is the emergence of a new figure in Israeli political life: the ordinary citizen-traitor who sells out his country not for ideology, but for a Telegram payment made in cryptocurrency.
The fact that such attempts were made isn't necessarily due to Iranian cunning — though that, too, deserves attention — but to internal conditions within Israeli society that created an opening for such infiltrations.
The Iranian method is strikingly simple. Intelligence experts describe it as a "spray-and-pray" operation: thousands of messages sent via Telegram and social media offer payment for "easy tasks" — no careful vetting, no assets cultivated over years, no dead drops, no safe houses. Just a message: interested in making money?
But the thing is, money wins when nothing else does. And this is where the analysis must turn inward, toward the conditions that made the Israeli social contract so brittle that a few thousand dollars could fracture it.
On Sunday, Israeli prosecutors charged two Israeli citizens with espionage for Iran — 19-year-old Sagi Haik, who had been in contact with an Iranian handler for months through Telegram, and 21-year-old Asaf Shitrit, who was allegedly recruited by Haik to carry out tasks under Iranian direction. The months-long contact included plans for the two men to travel to an Arab country for "training," while the younger suspect allegedly told Israeli authorities that he had given "fake intelligence" to his Iranian handler in the form of a forged document detailing plans for a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. Prosecutors warned that if the allegedly fake document had reached Tehran, it could have triggered a preemptive Iranian attack.
It was the latest entry in what Israeli security commentators now describe as a "magefa" — an epidemic. Since October 2023, over 50 indictments have been filed against Israeli citizens for spying on behalf of Iran. In 2025, Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet, reported a 400% increase in Iranian recruitment attempts compared to the previous year, which itself had seen an unprecedented surge.
In 2026, several prominent cases dominated the headlines. In March, an Iron Dome reservist was arrested on suspicion of passing along details on how the missile interceptor system worked in exchange for $1000. During the past month alone, a rash of spy rings was uncovered: two suspected moles in the Israeli Air Force, a thwarted plot to assassinate former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, four active-duty soldiers accused of spying for Iran, and now, the two citizens with the forged documents.
The suspects have ranged in age from 13 to 73. They include ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, Azerbaijani immigrants, a Bnei Brak resident who stalked a nuclear scientist, reservists who filmed Iron Dome batteries, and soldiers arrested during an ongoing "existential" war with Iran.
What is notable about this development isn't the intelligence failure, or even the relative success in uncovering the espionage operations. The more interesting part is the underlying sociological realities that made it possible. Emblematic of this reality is the emergence of a new figure in Israeli political life: the ordinary citizen-traitor who sells out his country not for ideology, but for a Telegram payment made in cryptocurrency.
The fact that such attempts were made isn't necessarily due to Iranian cunning — though that, too, deserves attention — but to internal conditions within Israeli society that created an opening for such infiltrations.
The Iranian method is strikingly simple. Intelligence experts describe it as a "spray-and-pray" operation: thousands of messages sent via Telegram and social media offer payment for "easy tasks" — no careful vetting, no assets cultivated over years, no dead drops, no safe houses. Just a message: interested in making money?
The first task might be spraying graffiti. The second is photographing a street. By the fifth or sixth mission, the recruit is filming the entrance to an air defense base. By the tenth, he is being asked to assassinate his reserve commander for NIS 100,000 (about $33,000).What makes this method work is not its sophistication but its environment: Iran is planting in soil that has already been made fertile. The Hebrew-language commentary keeps coming back to a single phrase, again and again: "ha-kesef menatze'akh." Money wins.
But the thing is, money wins when nothing else does. And this is where the analysis must turn inward, toward the conditions that made the Israeli social contract so brittle that a few thousand dollars could fracture it.
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