Israelis are being recruited as spies for Iran in what security experts call an espionage 'epidemic'

Abdal Jawad Omar | Mondoweiss

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?

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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Did Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein Work For Mossad?

Comment: In a word: Yes.  Mossad are knee-deep in all kinds of disgusting activities, much like many of our intelligence agencies.

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Philip Giraldi
The American Herald

The extent of Israeli spying directed against the United States is a huge story that is only rarely addressed in the mainstream media. The Jewish state regularly tops the list for ostensibly friendly countries that aggressively conduct espionage against the U.S. and Jewish American Jonathan Pollard, who was imprisoned in 1987 for spying for Israel, is now regarded as the most damaging spy in the history of the United States.
 
Last week I wrote about how Israeli spies operating more-or-less freely in the U.S. are rarely interfered with, much less arrested and prosecuted, because there is an unwillingness on the part of upper echelons of government to do so.

I cited the case of Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Hollywood movie producer who had a secret life that included stealing restricted technology in the United States to enable development of Israel's nuclear weapons program, something that was very much against U.S. interests. Milchan was involved in a number of other thefts as well as arms sales on behalf of the Jewish state, so much so that his work as a movie producer was actually reported to be less lucrative than his work as a spy and black-market arms merchant, for which he operated on a commission basis. 

That Milchan has never been arrested by the United States government or even questioned about his illegal activity, which was well known to the authorities, is just one more manifestation of the effectiveness of Jewish power in Washington.
 
A far more compelling case involving possible espionage with major political manifestations has just re-surfaced. I am referring to Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire Wall Street "financier" who has been arrested and charged with operating a "vast" network of underage girls for sex, operating out of his mansions in New York City and Florida as well as his private island in the Caribbean, referred to by visitors as "Orgy Island." Among other high-value associates, it is claimed that Epstein was particularly close to Bill Clinton, who flew dozens of times on Epstein's private 727. 

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Recruiting American Spies for Israel

Philip Giraldi

Unz Review

Israel never loses an opportunity to promote what it perceives to be its interests. That any nation would do just that most of the time should surprise no one, but Israel is perhaps unique in terms of how assiduously it works at creating situations that favor it through the use of corruption of foreign governments and subversion of existing institutions. For most countries, the actions of a minority that seeks to advance the interests of a foreign nation would face strong resistance, but Israel manages to get away with what it does due to the presence of powerful and wealthy diaspora communities, most particularly in the Anglophone countries, but also in France.

The Israel Lobby in the United States has been subjected to some scrutiny thanks largely to the impetus provided by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s groundbreaking study The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. More recent revelations have come from undercover journalism undertaken by al-Jazeera, which has demonstrated how British Jewish groups and parliamentarians have worked together with Israeli Embassy intelligence officers to remove public officials believed to be critical of Israel. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, has been on the receiving end of a campaign to replace him for his alleged anti-Semitism solely because he has condemned Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. A second al-Jazeera investigation demonstrated how The Lobby, cooperating with the Israeli Embassy, has been controlling discussion of the Middle East in the United States, which should have surprised no one.

Europe indeed appears to be a hotbed of anti-Semitism, or so Israel and its friends would have us believe. Leaders in France, Germany and Britain feel compelled to frequently address the issue, making the equivalent of a war on anti-Semitism a principal objective of government. The United States has joined this effort, appointing a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism whose job includes reporting other countries’ treatment of Jews and Israel.

The newest wrinkle comes under the category of Lawfare. It consists of hate crime laws that are directed against anyone criticizing Jews and, increasingly, Israel. In fact, any criticism of Israel is frequently being seen as a criminal offense, a trend that is also evident in the United States at the national, state and local levels, where Jewish groups have also been quick off the mark in claiming that anti-Semitism is surging. Freedom of speech in the western world has been diminished as a result.

Diaspora Jews are well entrenched in the media, which has enabled them to promote a narrative favorable to Israel no matter what it does, to include a repetitive dose of holocaust guilt that plays out from Hollywood and elsewhere in the media. The assiduously cultivated message for the public is that Jews are always the victims, never the aggressors, even when IDF snipers shoot Arab children and medical workers during protests.

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Assange as free to leave as someone ‘on a rubber boat in a sharkpool’ – UN's Melzer destroys Hunt

RT

After finding that Julian Assange displayed symptoms of “prolonged psychological torture,” UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer has traded barbs with the UK’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt over the WikiLeaks founder’s persecution. 

“This is wrong. Assange chose to hide in the embassy and was always free to leave and face justice,” British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Hunt tweeted less than an hour after Melzer gave his statement on Assange’s condition, insinuating that Assange’s time in the Ecuadorian embassy in London was somehow voluntary.

“The UN Special Rapporteur should allow British courts to make their judgments without his interference or inflammatory accusations,” Hunt added.

Melzer quickly fired back in a rather creative fashion, saying: “With all due respect, Sir: Mr Assange was about as ‘free to leave’ as someone sitting on a rubber boat in a sharkpool.” He also reiterated comments that the British justice system had failed to show the “impartiality and objectivity required by the rule of law.”

Melzer drew on his two decades' experience working with prisoners of war and political prisoners when assessing Assange’s deteriorating mental state, which was further exacerbated by a lack of adequate medical care for several years.

The UN special rapporteur on torture also stated that Assange appeared agitated, stressed and was unable to cope with the complexities of his legal case, for which he failed to testify via video link Thursday citing health issues.

Melzer expressed concern about the potential for a “politicized show trial” should Assange be extradited to the US to face a slew of charges under the Espionage Act, following what he dubbed “persecution” not “prosecution” at the hands of the British legal system. He alleged that “dozens if not hundreds of individuals” including judges and senior politicians had defamed Assange, though he did not name any specifically.

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See also:  ‘Grave concerns’: Assange can barely talk, moved to prison hospital, says WikiLeaks

Mossad and the Rise of the VC-Spy Alliance

Deep State Blog

The growth of intelligence agencies in the 21st century has been powered by the development of new technologies, created by start-ups, which are powered by intelligence agencies. This unvirtuous circle of money and espionage is a new and daunting challenge for civil liberties and human rights groups.

The U.S intelligence community has a venture capital organization, Inqtel, founded by the CIA in 1999. Israel’s Mossad has Libertad Ventures, founded in June 2017.

As The Times of Israel reports

Libertad was set up as a strategic investment arm of the Mossad. Its purpose is to help build the organization’s technological capabilities and create a bridge to the Israeli startup industry. Since its establishment, the fund has received hundreds of applications from both Israeli and foreign entrepreneurs, the statement said. The Mossad, the Shin Bet security agency and even the Israeli army are stepping out of the shadows and opening up to working with civilian firms, as greater cooperation is needed .

“Stepping out of the shadows” is another way of saying intelligence services are increasingly open about what they used to do secretly.

Inqtel’s board of trustees is an all-star team of Silicon Valley bankers and intelligence agency operatives, including former CIA director George Tenet. Its alumni includes dozens of high tech firms. Libertad, by contrast, says it will not disclose the name of companies it funds.

The alliance of venture capital and secret intelligence professionals serves the needs of both. The technologists gets funding. The spies get cutting edge tools to surveill enemies, control dissidents, and wage war: spyware, facial recognition technology, and autonomous weapons to name a few.

Some of these technologies may make the public safer–detection of chemical and nuclear weapons–but all of them make secret intelligence agencies stronger.

Israeli’s NSO Group exemplifies the VC-spy alliance. Created by veterans of Israeli signals intelligence service in 2011, NSO created the Pegasus software that can covertly take control of a mobile phone, copy its data and turn on the microphone for surveillance, all via a single phone call via What’sApp. NSO spyware has been licensed to dozens of countries including Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Bahrain and the UAE.

In February, Novalpina Capital, a London-based hedge fund, bought a controlling interest in the NSO Group. Spyware, it seems, is a high-growth investment opportunity.

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How the Venezuelan intelligence service defeated the CIA

Al Manar
ICH

The small Venezuelan counterintelligence service SEBIN (Bolivian National Intelligence Service) managed to humiliate the CIA, revealed the Romanian expert Valentin Vasilescu. According to him, the US intel service had undertaken an initiative in Venezuela aiming to overthrowing the president, Nicolás Maduro making use of its HUMINT section (human intelligence), that is, espionage carried out by infiltrated US agents, who in turn have networks of local informants.

But, says Valsilescu, SEBIN has managed to infiltrate all opposition groups trying to seize power in Caracas through its counterintelligence agents.

He (SEBIN; ndt) has also infiltrated his officers into the US-funded press and there has been an operation aimed at selecting and publishing the most miraculous but false news related to political events in Venezuela. Therefore, there were several “leaks” that were delivered to the CIA, such as, for example, the intention of some generals to betray Maduro.

To earn the trust of CIA agents, SEBIN members even organized conspiracy meetings with Venezuelan generals, under the full control of Venezuela’s intelligence service and military counterintelligence. The “desertion” of General Manuel Figuera, head of the SEBIN, the release of Leopoldo López from his house arrest and the provision, for Juan Guaido, of a platoon of more than 1,000 soldiers belonging to the SEBIN to take the garrison of Carlota, in Caracas, they were part of the intoxication operation directed at the CIA agents to convince Washington of the success of the coup.

When the White House finally gave the green light to the action on April 30, it became one of the biggest failures for the CIA in recent decades.

Venezuela has shown that fighting with patriotism and professionalism, even for an embargoed country, can disrupt the plans of the CIA, according to the Romanian expert.

Translation by Ana - original: http://spanish.almanar.com.lb/315636


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Inside the UAE’s Secret Hacking Team of U.S. Mercenaries

Reuters

 

Two weeks after leaving her position as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. National Security Agency in 2014, Lori Stroud was in the Middle East working as a hacker for an Arab monarchy.

She had joined Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to help the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants and human rights activists critical of the monarchy.

Stroud and her team, working from a converted mansion in Abu Dhabi known internally as “the Villa,” would use methods learnt from a decade in the U.S intelligence community to help the UAE hack into the phones and computers of its enemies.

Stroud had been recruited by a Maryland cybersecurity contractor to help the Emiratis launch hacking operations, and for three years, she thrived in the job. But in 2016, the Emiratis moved Project Raven to a UAE cybersecurity firm named DarkMatter. Before long, Stroud and other Americans involved in the effort say they saw the mission cross a red line: targeting fellow Americans for surveillance.

“I am working for a foreign intelligence agency who is targeting U.S. persons,” she told Reuters. “I am officially the bad kind of spy.”

The story of Project Raven reveals how former U.S. government hackers have employed state-of-the-art cyber-espionage tools on behalf of a foreign intelligence service that spies on human rights activists, journalists and political rivals.

Interviews with nine former Raven operatives, along with a review of thousands of pages of project documents and emails, show that surveillance techniques taught by the NSA were central to the UAE’s efforts to monitor opponents. The sources interviewed by Reuters were not Emirati citizens.

The operatives utilized an arsenal of cyber tools, including a cutting-edge espionage platform known as Karma, in which Raven operatives say they hacked into the iPhones of hundreds of activists, political leaders and suspected terrorists. Details of the Karma hack were described in a separate Reuters article today

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Of Suspected Spies & Cathedrals... and Western Media Hypocrisy

Finian Cunningham
Strategic Culture

It’s hilarious to see the double standards of Western media applied in the case of alleged American spy Paul Whelan who is being detained in Russia and facing trial.

Whelan, a former US marine, was denied bail this week in a Moscow court after it emerged that he had been found in possession of state secrets while supposedly holidaying in Russia.

Western media widely aired the theory that the American man has been “set up” by Russian state security after he had received a USB computer stick from someone while staying in a Moscow hotel last month. The person whom he received the disk from has not been identified, but presumably he or she was known to the American, otherwise why would he have accepted the item?

Whelan claims he was in Russia as a tourist and that he didn’t check the contents of the computer mini-disk at the time because he assumed it contained “images of a cathedral he had visited”. He was reportedly arrested soon after receipt of the disk, on December 28, by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers.

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Why Does Imran Awan Work At His Clinton-Linked Attorney's Law Firm?

Zero Hedge

stunning video by investigative journalist Jason Goodman of Crowdsource the Truth reveals that Pakistani IT worker Imran Awan is reportedly answering phones at the office of his attorney, Chris Gowen. 

Gowen notably worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton in various capacities.

Gowen is a founding partner of Gowen, Rhoades, Winograd and Silva law firm, with offices in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, Penn.

His official bio on the firm’s web site notes that he “left the Public Defender’s office to work for former President William Jefferson Clinton and then-Senator Hillary Clinton. Chris was a fact checker for President Clinton’s memoir, ‘My Life.'”

“He also served as a traveling aid for President Clinton’s national and international trips. Chris finished his tenure with the Clintons by directing the advance operations for then-Senator Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign.”
Conservative Review — which first reported Gowen’s extensive Clinton connections Wednesday — said they also include work for the Clinton Foundation and its Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. -Daily Caller

In the video, Goodman can be seen visiting the law offices of Awan's attorney, where he asks to speak with the former House IT staffer. After his request was denied, Goodman asks: "Is Imran here?", to which the employee replies "Uh, he is, why?"

Goodman responds "'Cause it sounds like he's answering your phones," which drew the retort "What's your point?" 

"Is he working for you?" asks Goodman, to which the employee whispers back "Go away." 
Watch: 

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Upcoming British Legislation Could Jail Journos for 14 Years

The Daily Bell

Planned Espionage Act could jail journos and whistleblowers as spies …  Proposals in the UK for a swingeing new Espionage Act that could jail journalists as spies have been developed in haste by legal advisors, The Register has learned.  The proposed law update is an attempt to ban reporting of future big data leaks.  The British government has received recommendations for a “future-proofed” new Espionage Act that would put leaking and whistleblowing in the same category as spying for foreign powers.  That threatens leakers and journalists with the same extended jail sentences as foreign agents. Sentences would apply even if – like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning – the leaker was not British, or in Britain, or was intent on acting in the public interest. – The Register

Britain is doing what one of the things it does best, which is thinking of how to punish people. Now it’s figuring out ways to throw more people in jail for longer periods of time for exposing various kinds of government crimes.

That’s right. It’s not thinking about lessening those crimes, only covering them up.
The British government has received an updated Espionage Act that is a good deal stronger than the act on the books. It puts journalists in the same boat as foreign agents when it comes to spying and also does not differentiate between those who are citizens of other countries and those who come from Britain.

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