🔒 The Economist: Why are so many Israeli Jews spying for Iran?

Key topics:

Mordechai Maman’s recruitment as an Israeli spy for Iran in 2024.
Increase in Israeli citizens betraying their country, fueled by disillusionment.
Iranian intelligence operations targeting ordinary citizens, using social media.

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From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com

Illustrations by *Noma Bar

The Economist

By Yossi Melman*

Unprecedented numbers are risking everything to help their country’s bitterest enemy ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Mordechai Maman, an Israeli in his early 70s known as Moti, was used to disappointment. His marriage had failed long ago, as had various business ventures, leaving him permanently strapped for cash. But at the start of 2024 he had reason to feel optimistic. His four grown-up children were doing well, he had acquired two new business partners, and he was in love.

Natalie was a glamorous Belarussian with glossy dark hair and bee-stung lips, several decades younger than him. The couple had been living together in Turkey, Maman’s adopted home, but had just moved to Ashkelon, a city in southern Israel near the border with Gaza. Natalie had started the long process of converting to Judaism and, in return, Maman promised her the world. “He was obsessed with her and was ready to fulfill every whim and financial request,” said a friend.

Being in love can make people do things that defy logic. In Maman’s case, his eagerness to please his girlfriend led him to betray his country. For years, he had been a proud Israeli patriot who adored Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. He had expressed strong right-wing views and anti-Arab sentiments in Facebook posts. But to the disbelief of his family and friends, Maman became a spy for the Jewish state’s bitterest foe, Iran.

According to Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, Maman is one of 39 Israelis arrested in the past year on suspicion of spying for Iran. One of their officials told me that the Iranians had turned hundreds of Israelis since the end of 2022. These individuals, who were recruited via social-media platforms or during travels to Turkey or Azerbaijan, come from diverse backgrounds: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, young and old, male and female.

Israel has always prided itself on its spycraft – and its national cohesion. Some see the apparent increase in Israelis who are willing to betray their country as evidence of its disillusionment and social fracturing. The Israeli authorities are worried. “We need to deter others from collaborating with our worst enemies,” said a former Shin Bet official, “before it turns into a national pandemic.”

Until he was recruited by Iran, Maman led an unremarkable life. He was born in 1952, served in the Israeli army as a young man, met his wife and moved to a rural part of northern Israel. There the couple raised their four children and ran a bed-and-breakfast. Maman was always looking for ways to make more money, but none of his schemes came to anything. After a shawarma stall failed to take off, Maman became entangled with criminals. He was later convicted of various offences including extortion and tax evasion. These “petty crimes”, as a friend described them, foreshadowed his eventual downfall.

According to Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, Maman is one of 39 Israelis arrested in the past year on suspicion of spying for Iran

Around 20 years ago, Maman, who had separated from his wife, moved to Turkey in search of better fortune. He settled in Samandag, a city on the Mediterranean coast, near the border with Syria, and set himself up as a wholesale trader, dealing in vegetables, fruit and spices – anything that could turn a profit.

He would return to Israel every so often to see friends and family. According to people who know him, Maman was evasive when asked about his job and gave the impression that he was working undercover for Mossad, the Israeli spy agency, and for Israeli special-forces units in Lebanon and Turkey. (Shin Bet and state prosecutors deny this.)

As time went on, Maman’s business began to struggle. Things looked up briefly when he met two cousins, Andrey and Junied Aslan, both Turkish citizens, who came on board as partners. (Shin Bet believes that at one point the cousins were working for both the Turkish and Iranian intelligence agencies.)

But by April 2024 Maman’s finances were in freefall again, not helped by Natalie’s love of the good life. According to WhatsApp conversations obtained by Shin Bet, he asked the Aslans for help. They arranged for him to meet a wealthy Iranian businessman named Eddie. Communicating via the cousins, Eddie promised to make Maman a rich man by opening doors in the fruit and pistachio markets.

Eddie failed to show up at the planned meeting, but his absence only heightened Maman’s interest. The Aslans said Eddie was in Iran and suggested Maman travel there to meet him. As an Israeli citizen, it would be difficult for him to cross the border legally, so Maman would have to smuggle himself across – an act of extreme recklessness.

In May Maman travelled with Andrey to a village in eastern Turkey, close to the border with Iran. There he stayed in a hotel waiting for further instructions from Eddie. Five days later, he left his passport, mobile phone and personal belongings with Andrey at the hotel and climbed into the back of a truck, where he was told to lie down on a mattress. “It seems Andrey had significant experience dealing with Turkish border guards,” said an Israeli intelligence officer. “It’s not that difficult to bribe them to look the other way.”

After driving Maman over the border, the truck pulled up at a villa. He was greeted warmly by several important-looking men – and by Eddie himself. Maman stayed at the villa for 12 hours. If it hadn’t yet dawned on him what line of work the Iranian was in, it must have soon.

In return for helping him with the wholesale business, Eddie asked Maman if he could do him some small “favours”. These included hiding money and weapons in Israel, photographing crowded areas, and intimidating Israeli Arabs who had failed to carry out the missions Iranian intelligence had paid them to do. Maman agreed.

Eddie and the other men were agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to the Israeli security service, the “favours” they asked Maman to do were taken from traditional intelligence textbooks, designed to test his commitment and create leverage over him in case he later refused to co-operate.

That evening, Maman returned to Turkey, once again hiding in the truck. Back at the hotel, Andrey handed him $1,300 in cash. The next day Maman flew to Belarus to reunite with Natalie, who was waiting for him at the airport; a few days later the couple went back to Israel.

Over the next three and a half months, Maman exchanged messages with Andrey and, through him, nudged Eddie to follow up on the fruit-and-nut deals they had discussed. In mid-August, Eddie responded positively and asked Maman to meet in Iran.

The Iranians said they would give him $150,000 if he agreed to assassinate either Binyamin Netanyahu or the defence minister Yoav Gallant

Maman went through the same rigmarole as before: staying in the hotel near the border, and – when given the signal – leaving his belongings with Andrey and crawling onto the bed in the truck. Shortly after arriving in Iran, the truck was met by a car containing Eddie and Andrey. They drove Maman to Eddie’s villa. On the way, Eddie informed Maman that they would meet two high-ranking Iranian intelligence agents who had travelled from Tehran to see him. Eddie added that the agents would be coming with an “open cheque” and suggested Maman ask for $1m for the tasks he would be assigned.

This information put Maman in a joyful mood. After a sumptuous lunch at the villa, he met the two agents Eddie had told him about. One of them spoke fluent Hebrew. Maman tried to impress the men by claiming to have excellent contacts with Israeli criminals. The agents, however, were interested only in him. As Eddie had advised, Maman demanded $1m. They countered with an advance payment of $150,000 if he agreed to assassinate either Netanyahu or Yoav Gallant, then the defence minister. They would also accept the execution of Ronen Bar, head of Shin Bet.

Maman was taken aback. These were the best protected, most inaccessible men in Israel. He had no idea how to assassinate them. But the agents insisted that they needed him to kill a high-value target. As a plan B, they suggested that Maman could assassinate Naftali Bennett, Israel’s former prime minister, at his home in the city of Ra’anana.

This sounded more doable, thought Maman. He agreed but stuck to his initial price of $1m. The agents said they would increase the advance to $400,000. They told him that Iran’s government wanted swift revenge for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas.

Haniyeh had been killed that July by a small bomb that had been hidden in his room at a Tehran guesthouse owned by the IRGC. Although Israel did not claim responsibility at the time, Israeli media reported that Mossad agents had carried out the operation. The assassination demonstrated that even Iran’s most secure hideouts weren’t safe.

Despite the offer of the higher advance, Maman held firm and refused to co-operate for less than $1m. Desperate to appease their superiors back in Tehran, the agents proposed a different mission: using explosives to assassinate the mayors of Nahariya and Acre, two Israeli coastal cities. Maman had claimed (falsely) that he knew the two mayors.

But after hours of back and forth, the agents and Maman still couldn’t agree on the fee. It was agreed the negotiations would continue the next day. That evening, Maman, Andrey and Eddie went for dinner at a fancy hotel, where Maman and Andrey would be staying.

Maman was so impressed by the delicious food and attentive service that he sent excited WhatsApp voice notes to Natalie. “It’s crazy!” he said, and promised to buy her an “exquisite perfume”. Natalie replied, “I don’t like floral scents”, and demanded a “well-refined perfume with tobacco and coffee aroma, which has to be strong and expensive”.

The next morning, Maman and Andrey returned to Eddie’s villa and the negotiations resumed. The agents had a new idea: could Maman recruit a Mossad operative and turn him into a double agent? Maman countered by promising to recruit a former Mossad official, but the agents insisted on someone in active service.

Once again, Maman demanded $1m, and once again, the meeting ended without resolution. Before he left that evening, Eddie gave him $5,000 in cash as a gesture of goodwill for attending the meetings.

After 48 hours in the lion’s den, Maman crossed back into Turkey. “He was lucky they let him go and didn’t kill him,” said an Israeli intelligence official familiar with Iranian operational methods. Maman flew to Israel via Cyprus. But when he stepped off the plane at Ben Gurion International airport, he was arrested by the police and officials from Shin Bet. Shocked, he yelled and swore at them.

Israeli military intelligence had intercepted messages between him, Andrey, Eddie and the Iranian agents. At first Maman denied he’d done anything wrong, but later admitted – during 14 sessions of tough interrogation – that he had met Iranian agents. He denied that he had any intention of harming Israeli national security, saying he wasn’t sure what he would have done if his handlers had actually paid him the $1m. “His defence claim is nonsense,” the serving Shin Bet official told me. “We have no doubt he did intend to damage Israeli security.”

Since Netanyahu’s return to power in 2022, the centrifugal forces in Israeli society have grown stronger. A culture of corruption has trickled down from the top

As a last-ditch effort to avoid punishment, Maman offered to act as a double agent and deceive the Iranians. His proposal was immediately rejected. Maman was charged with contacting a foreign agent and entering an enemy state without authorisation. His lawyer, Eyal Besserglick, at first reiterated Maman’s claim that he had previously assisted Israeli security services and said that he would present witnesses in court to confirm this. But eventually Maman agreed to plead guilty to the charges. Natalie was questioned by officials but later released.

From the moment of its birth, Israel has been at war with its neighbours. Over the decades Arab countries have tried to recruit Israeli citizens to spy for them, but without any notable success. Their failure can be attributed, at least partly, to the loyalty Israelis have historically felt towards the state. The idea of a homeland for the Jewish people, founded after the horrors of the Holocaust and nurtured by a spirit of collective endeavour and mutual aid, was a powerful one. Compulsory military service for both men and women reinforced the idea that national identity was rooted in national security. Despite the friction between the nationalist and ultra-Orthodox sections of Israeli society and the divisions between left and right over the occupation of Palestinian territories after 1967, patriotism remained a strong emotive force in Israel.

But in recent years, and particularly since Netanyahu’s return to power in 2022, the centrifugal forces in Israeli society have grown stronger. A culture of corruption has trickled down from the top. Netanyahu’s attempts to weaken the judiciary have created political turmoil and polarised Israelis. There was a brief period of national unity as Israel reeled from Hamas’s attacks on October 7th 2023, but arguments over the intelligence failures that allowed them, as well as over how to secure the release of the hostages, only deepened the country’s faultlines.

Yoram Peri, a professor emeritus of Israel studies at the University of Maryland, told me that “Israeli society is sliding into a dangerous state of implosion.” Peri believes that Netanyahu’s attempts to nobble the judiciary and control the media have contributed to the “deterioration of the old traditional institutions” and a general decline in respect for the law. “No wonder that in such a chaotic reality, more and more Israelis have less and less inhibitions and are ready to break the taboo that you don’t betray your country,” he said.

This may help explain why Iran, despite its crude espionage techniques, is now succeeding where other enemies of Israel have failed. For nearly two decades a spook war has been taking place between Israel and Iran (and Iran’s proxy Hizbullah). Mossad, Israel’s foreign espionage agency, assassinated Iranian scientists, inserted malware into Iran’s nuclear computers, and sabotaged Iran’s nuclear and missile sites. In February 2008 Mossad, in a joint operation with the CIA, killed Hizbullah official Imad Fayez Mughniyeh in Damascus. Iran and Hizbullah have tried since then to retaliate with attempts to kidnap and kill Israeli diplomats, officials and even Israeli tourists.

Iran’s operations, once confined to professional agents, have recently spread to encompass ordinary citizens. The Shin Bet official I spoke to characterised it as a “spray-and-pray” approach, which seeks to develop a handful of high-quality recruits by making low-stakes investments in many others. It is reminiscent of methods once used by the KGB: the Soviet Union managed to infiltrate Israel’s nascent secret services and other institutions by preying on Israelis with communist sympathies. (This was made simpler by the fact that the Soviet Union was considered a rival of Israel, rather than an enemy like Iran and Arab states.)

Now recruits are more likely to be driven by greed than ideology. A common Iranian ploy is to post ads on social media asking if people want to earn some easy money. In July 2019 Shin Bet announced it had foiled an Iranian attempt to recruit a wide network of agents in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza via social-networking platforms. A Shin Bet spokesman quoted at the time said, “the vast majority of Israeli citizens refused to co-operate with [the Iranians], because they suspected it was a hostile element and cut off contact with them.”

Aziz Nisanov, a 43-year-old part-time musician from the port city of Haifa in northern Israel, was one of those who were tempted by the prospect of a fistful of dollars from the Iranians. But his story also exemplifies the weakening allegiance many in Israel feel to their country.

Israel is a country of immigrants, with priority given to Jewish ones. Immediately after its establishment in 1948, Israel enacted the “Law of Return”, which grants automatic citizenship to people with at least one Jewish grandparent.

“No wonder that in such a chaotic reality, more and more Israelis have less and less inhibitions and are ready to break the taboo that you don’t betray your country”

Nisanov came to Israel with his family from Azerbaijan at the age of seven. Jewish Azeris are known as “mountain Jews” and many are the descendants of Persian Jews from Iran, which borders Azerbaijan. They have a distinct culture, including their own dialect, Judeo-Tat. Nisanov’s family, like many others from his community, emigrated partly due to the hardships in the former Soviet Union, but also out of a strong sense of Jewish identity: they felt life would surely be better in the Jewish homeland.

It wasn’t. Then and now, many Jewish Azeris in Israel are hard-up. They struggle to find jobs, cope with the high cost of living or find affordable housing. Many Jewish Azeris feel marginalised.

In mid-2022 Nisanov visited his homeland, where he confessed to an old friend that he was finding it hard to make a living as a musician. His friend introduced him to a 56-year-old Iranian of Azeri descent, who went by the name Elshan Agayev (nearly a third of Iranians are of Azeri descent). Agayev claimed to work for someone called Orhan. Both of these men were, in fact, Iranian intelligence officers. According to Shin Bet, Nisanov willingly agreed to work with the two men. His lawyer, Maher Telhami, said his client was motivated by financial hardship and feelings of alienation from Israeli society.

Initially, Nisanov was tasked with photographing civilian locations in Israel. However, the orders soon escalated into documenting military and strategic sites. Following detailed instructions and markers on Google Earth and Google Maps, Nisanov photographed the Mossad headquarters in Glilot, the Haifa naval base, Iron Dome batteries (Israel’s air-defence system), and the headquarters of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in Tel Aviv.

Nisanov recruited six accomplices, including two minors and his 19-year-old son, Yigal Nisanov, who had Hebraised his surname to Nisan. Yigal, once a technical serviceman in the Israeli Air Force, had deserted his post and was wanted by military police. Together, they formed an efficient spy ring, snooping on nearly 100 targets across Israel.

In its most daring mission, the group was told to survey damage at Nevatim Air Base, home to Israel’s F-35 “stealth” fighter squadrons, following an Iranian missile attack in April 2024. They were also tasked with shadowing the base’s commander, a brigadier general.

Nisanov even used his own family. When his mother was invited to a reception at the newly opened Azeri embassy in Tel Aviv, he encouraged her to take photographs. On at least one occasion, Nisanov travelled to Azerbaijan, where he received further instructions from Iranian agents.

The group, which received between $500 and $1,200 per mission, accumulated approximately $300,000 in 15 months. Payments were made in cryptocurrencies, some linked to Russian sources. Iranian intelligence covered expenses, including hotel rooms, rental cars, bikes, new cameras and computers. Israeli authorities later confiscated one car, two motorcycles and $11,000 in cash.

The ring’s activities had tangible consequences. Military sites photographed by Nisanov and his team became targets for Hizbullah rockets and drones. In May 2024 Hizbullah downed an Israeli observatory balloon equipped with advanced sensors, one of several sites surveilled by the group.

The operation ended abruptly in September 2024, when Shin Bet special forces raided the men’s homes and arrested them. Officials described the group as “one of the most dangerous and certainly the largest espionage rings ever operated in Israel”. Chillingly, it emerged that Nisanov was set to perform his music ten days later at an event due to be attended by Isaac Herzog, Israeli’s president, and several cabinet members.

The story of Asher Binyamin Weiss, a 24-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew from the city of Bnei Brak, exposes another deep fissure within Israeli society. Until last year, most ultra-Orthodox Jews were exempt from military service, which is obligatory for other Israelis. In June 2024, however, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that ultra-Orthodox Jews could no longer refuse the draft – sparking protests in cities with large ultra-Orthodox populations, such as Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. The decision cemented Weiss’s contempt for Israel’s government. He hung posters around Bnei Brak comparing Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler. After he clicked on an online ad posted by the Iranians, Weiss had no hesitation in agreeing to their demands.

Iranian agents asked Weiss to assassinate a senior Israeli nuclear scientist and his family. (The mission had previously been assigned to a group of Israeli Arabs, but they had been intercepted by the security services.) Weiss photographed the nuclear scientist’s home and car and successfully infiltrated the Weizmann Institute near Tel Aviv, where the scientist worked. Weiss was arrested before he could cause any harm, but somehow managed to get rid of his phone, destroying any evidence of his chats with the Iranians. For his spying, Weiss had received $25,000 in his digital wallet from the Iranians, though Israeli investigators believe he earned more.

During his interrogation, Weiss claimed he had been “afraid to say no. I didn’t want them to hurt me.” Of the Iranian agent, he said: “He told me, ‘Find me more people – for each person you bring you’ll receive 20% of the profits he receives.’ They always asked us to find more and more people for their tasks.”

In December Moti Maman was convicted of acting on behalf of the Iranian intelligence agencies and entering an enemy country without permission (he has yet to be sentenced). Weiss, Nisanov and his accomplices, and the seven Israeli Arabs are sitting in prison cells, waiting for their trials to begin. They look set to be joined by more alleged spies. At the end of January, two IDF reservists, Yuri Eliaspov and Georgi Andreyev, both 21, were arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran, with Eliaspov having shared video footage of the Iron Dome system in operation.

In a statement, one of the officers investigating Eliaspov and Andreyev’s cases said: “Anyone who received Yuri’s video and understands these systems could act against the State of Israel, which is very dangerous.” The young men, who could face life imprisonment, appear to have been motivated by money. “I got into a difficult financial situation,” Eliaspov told prosecutors. At the time of his arrest, he had been paid $2,500 by the Iranians. Andreyev had pocketed just $50.

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*Yossi Melman is a defence and security analyst for Haaretz and co-author of “Spies Against Armageddon