Once, the notion of an Israeli citizen spying for Iran could shock the nation.
There were rare cases – outliers whose names were seared ignominiously into public memory: Nahum Manbar, the kibbutznik arms dealer who helped Iran build chemical weapons in the 1990s. Gonen Segev, a disgraced former minister turned smuggler, turned Iranian agent.
They were the exceptions that proved the rule: Israelis don’t work for the enemy.
Not anymore.
Two Israelis arrested for spying for Iran
On Tuesday, security authorities announced the arrest of two more Israeli citizens – Roi Mizrahi and Almog Atias, both 25, from Nesher near Haifa – suspected of carrying out a number of missions for Iranian handlers. One of the tasks – ultimately not completed – was allegedly to install a surveillance camera in Kfar Ahim to give the Iranians visual intelligence on the area near Defense Minister Yisrael Katz’s home.
That announcement came just two days after another: the arrest of 18-year-old Moshe Atias from Yavne, who is suspected of gathering intelligence in the cardiology department of a hospital in central Israel, where former prime minister Naftali Bennett was hospitalized last month.
This was not the first time Bennett, a staunch critic of Iran, was targeted. Moshe Maman, a 72-year-old Ashkelon resident sentenced last month to 10 years in prison on espionage-related charges, was reportedly asked during one of two recent visits to Iran about assassinating Bennett.
According to a Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) report issued in January, 2024 saw a 400% increase in espionage cases compared to the previous year.
Superintendent Maor Goren, head of the security division at the Israel Police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit, told Kan Bet that the arrest of Mizrahi and Almog Atias marked the 20th case his unit and the Shin Bet have handled over the past year involving Israelis suspected of spying for Iran.
Once national scandals, such arrests now hardly register.
But the spike in cases is not the result of a sudden wave of ideological sympathy for Iran. It reflects something more structural: Iran has changed how it recruits – and whom it targets.
Gone are the days of carefully vetted recruits and clandestine meetings in foreign capitals. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has embraced a cheaper, faster model of espionage – less sophisticated, perhaps, but surprisingly effective. They now operate more like digital predators than Cold War spies.
With a few taps on a smartphone, Iranian operatives send out mass recruitment messages via Telegram, email, and other social media platforms, offering Israelis easy money for seemingly simple tasks. And there are an abundance of financially vulnerable Israelis – Goren said Mizrahi had run up gambling debts – looking for easy money.
Goren said that the initial assignments are designed to feel harmless: photograph a street sign, burn a placard with “Bibi” written on it. The suspects – who often understand fairly quickly whom they’re working for – justify these first steps by saying, “It doesn’t hurt anybody.”
But then the tasks escalate.
According to Goren, Mizrahi was later asked to move a bag of explosives from one location to another.
In December, seven residents of Haifa – immigrants from Azerbaijan – were arrested in what is believed to be the most serious case yet. They allegedly carried out hundreds of missions for Iranian handlers over a two-year period, including surveillance of sensitive sites later targeted in the Iranian missile and drone attacks.
This new Iranian model is less about grooming elite operatives and more about volume. Cast a wide enough net, and eventually someone will take the bait.
Goren noted that for every individual who accepts the offer, others – also contacted by Iranian operatives – cut off communication and report the approach to the police.
Still, the number of those who don’t walk away is striking.
Contrary to what one might have expected, those who do take the bait are not motivated by a hatred of the state. They are not Hezbollah sympathizers or extremists. Many are simply financially desperate.
The suspects arrested come from across Israeli society: immigrants from the former Soviet Union, haredim (ultra-Orthodox), east Jerusalem Arabs, IDF deserters, and minors. According to Goren, there is no single profile – just a common denominator: financial vulnerability.
Iran’s stepped-up recruitment comes alongside an overall more aggressive posture toward Israel since October 7. Iran’s direct missile and drone attacks on Israel in April and October 2024, combined with the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s in Tehran last July, have heightened Tehran’s urgency and its willingness to hit Israel at home, whether with missiles and drones or through intelligence subversion.
While many of these operations appear amateurish and are intercepted early, the sheer volume points to a much more aggressive and persistent effort by Iran than in the past.
Israel’s security services have responded in kind. The Shin Bet and Lahav 433 have expanded surveillance, ramped up interception, and disrupted many of the plots. But the sheer number of attempted recruitments – and the accessibility of willing participants – leaves one wondering how many have slipped through the net.
What has changed?
It also raises a deeper question: what has changed?
That’s what makes this wave different from the days of Manbar and Segev. Back then, betrayal was a scandal. Today, Iran has developed what appears to be a well-oiled system: recruit, assign, pay, repeat. Not a fluke. A pipeline.
And that pipeline doesn’t run through ideology or politics, but through desperation: financial distress and personal instability. Iran isn’t penetrating Israeli society at large; it’s preying on those slipping through the cracks, and – disturbingly – it is doing that better than it ever has in the past.