January 17, 2025
The Islamic Republic may look lame as it tries to hit Israel with missiles and use proxies to skewer the Jewish state, but it is doing astoundingly well recruiting Israelis to conduct espionage jobs for it inside Israel. That’s not the view of the Iran Times.
It’s the opinion of the Israeli police, who have arrested 27 Israelis since September and charged them with joining 13 espionage cells organized by the Islamic Republic inside Israel. Admittedly, most of those schemes have been small bore and hardly threatening to the Israeli state. But the fact that so many Israelis have been willing to do Iran’s work for it has shocked Israel.
It appears that all those recruited have been poor and have been willing to help Iran for the sake of money. It also appears that many of those recruited but not all refused to do anything major, like trying to assassinate Israeli officials. They have scrawled graffiti on walls. They have taken photos of potential targets.
They have firebombed a few cars. It does not appear that any of the recruits have been Iranianborn. And some of them have been little more than petty thieves in Israeli society. Some had been convicted of sexual offenses and others were deserters from the Israel Defense Forces. One official described them as “marginalized” citizens.
The 27 have been arrested over the last few months and been charged before Israeli courts. At least two of them were ultra-Orthodox Jews. Asher Ben Artzi, former head of Interpol in Israel, told Iran International, “Personally, I can say that in the past to find Israelis who would be willing to betray the country for the sake of money was very rare.
But, unfortunately, today this is not the case. Iranian intelligence has acted in a smart way and succeeded in locating such Israelis.” He said the pettiness of the tasks they have been assigned by Iran should not be seen as minimizing the threat. He said Iran was just using the petty assignments to test the new recruits and to suck them into Iran’s intelligence maw before assigning them more serious tasks.
At least one of the recruits confessed that he had been asked to assassinate a senior Israeli general and said he refused to accept that assignment. But others agreed. Alexander Granovsky, 29, said it was all about money. “I need money. They pay and I do it.” He said he was willing to shoot at vehicles, but had refused to kill anyone.
Granovsky had been sentenced to nine months in jail previously for drugs and theft. Police said he set fire to eight vehicles, sprayed walls with the slogan “Children of Ruhollah” (a reference to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) and photographed the streets around the house of Benny Gantz, then a cabinet minister making policy for the war against Hamas and Hezbollah.
Granovsky said he refused, out of fear, to set fire to a police car. The recruits were located by the Islamic Republic in a very simple way. Job offers were posted on the messaging platform Telegram! Most of the recruits said they knew they were working for Iran. But they wanted the cash. In September, Moti Maman, 72, was the first to be arrested.
His case appears to be the most serious one. He acknowledged traveling twice to Iran for assignments. The Islamic Republic wanted him to kill Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Shin Bet intelligence chief Ronen Bar. He said he was willing to kill but wanted much more money than the Islamic Republic was willing to pay. In October, Israel arrested seven Israelis who had been born in Azerbaijan.
Their last assignment was to assess the damage done in Iran’s missile barrages against Israel. Seven Arabs were arrested and charged with agreeing to gather information on an Israeli nuclear scientist preparatory to killing him. This was a rare case involving Arab recruits.
Iran seemed to believe it was better to recruit Jews because they could move around Israel more easily. Artyom Zolotarev, 33, admitted to committing arson and vandalism at the request of his Iranian handlers. But he said he turned down the offer of $125,000 to kill an Israeli official.
A Russian-born Jew, Vladislav Viktorsson, and his girlfriend were paid $5,000 to vandalize ATMs and set fires in forests. Police said Viktorson had agreed to assassinate a public official by throwing a grenade into his home but was arrested before carrying out that scheme. He had a conviction record for rape and sodomy of girls as young as 12.
