Tehran recruited Israeli civilian to assassinate top officials, including PM

JERUSALEM – Iranian security officials recruited an Israeli civilian to carry out high-level assassinations of senior Israeli figures – up to and including the prime minister – according to a Police and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) statement.

It reveals a 73-year-old Jewish citizen, Moti Maman, who was arrested in August, was indicted in connection with the plot Thursday. The statement added the suspect was apparently smuggled into Iran on two separate occasions, and had also received some payments to carry out his supposed missions.

An Israeli citizen arrested on suspicion of plotting to kill Benjamin Netanyahu in an Iran-backed assassination plot has been named as 73-year-old Moti Maman.

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The Police and Shin Bet investigation revealed Maman, who hails from the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, lived for lengthy periods in Turkey, and has extensive connections with Turkish and Iranian nationals. As such, he was arrested on suspicion of committing security offenses related to contact with intelligence elements of the Iranian regime.

As part of these relationships, in April 2024, Maman agreed, after mediation from Turkish officials Andrey Farouk Aslan and Junaid Aslan, to meet with a rich businessman living in Iran named “Eddy,” to promote business activity.

Maman met with two of Eddy’s associates in the Turkish city of Samandag in April 2024, when he reportedly held a phone conversation with the mysterious Iranian contact. Eddy said he was not able to leave Iran.

The investigation also revealed that following this, in May 2024, Maman went to Turkey, where he met with Andrey, Junaid, and Eddy’s two representatives. After it became clear Eddy could no longer leave Iran for Turkey, the Israeli citizen was smuggled by car through a land border crossing at the Turkish border, near the city of Van, located in eastern Turkey. There he met with Eddy and another man named Haja, who was presented as an operative on behalf of the Iranian security apparatus.

Maman and the others went to Eddy’s house in Iran, where he was introduced as an Israeli citizen at a meeting. Eddy reportedly asked the Israeli to carry out various security tasks within Israel on the Iranian regime’s behalf, including: transferring money or a gun at predetermined points, photographing various crowded places in Israel and sending them to the Iranian authorities, and to threaten other Israeli citizens employed in the country on behalf of the Iranian regime who did not carry out requested tasks. Maman said he would look into the matter.

The investigation also revealed that during August 2024, Maman entered Iran for the second time while being smuggled through the border crossing while hidden in the cab of a truck. Staying again at Eddy’s house, he met other Iranian intelligence officials, who requested he carry out terrorist activities for Iran on Israeli soil, and in the process to promote assassination attacks against Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, or Defense Minister Yoav Galant, or the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar

Iranian intelligence officials also asked to look into the possibility of assassinating other senior leaders, such as former prime minister Naftali Bennett – who has been outside of the official political ring since he stepped aside from the position and handed it over to Yair Lapid in 2022 – and other public figures. In their view, they saw it as revenge for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil in July 2024, which the Iranian authorities attributed to the state of Israel, although Jerusalem never officially, publicly took responsibility for the action that so humiliated Tehran.

According to the investigation, the businessman demanded an advance payment of one million dollars before he was prepared to take any action, which the Iranian agents apparently rebuffed.

Following the initial encounter with Eddy, Maman held another meeting with the Iranian intelligence officials, in which they repeated their proposal to assassinate senior officials, explored the possibility he would deposit funds so others could locate Russian and American officials for the purpose of eliminating opponents of the Iranian regime in Europe and the United States. They also wished to create a Mossad double-agent.

A senior Shin Bet official explained further. “This is a very serious affair, which shows the great lengths to which Iranian intelligence agencies will go to recruit Israeli citizens to promote terrorist activities in Israel. The assessment of the security officials is that the Iranians will continue their efforts to recruit operatives in Israel for the purpose of gathering intelligence and carrying out terrorist missions in Israel, while also turning, among other things, to criminal elements to help carry out their missions.

“At a time when the state of Israel is at war on several fronts, an Israeli citizen goes to an enemy country on two different occasions, meets with Iranian intelligence agents and expresses a willingness to carry out serious terrorist acts on Israeli soil. His actions helped Iran and its intelligence agents in their campaign against Israel.

“The Shin Bet takes a very serious view of any contact by Israelis with Iranian elements, while the motive for the contact in the first place being a business pretext or a criminal platform, does not diminish the severity of the acts and the risk inherent in them, much less cooperation with these elements.”

The timing of the information’s release is also interesting. Surely the date of the indictment was set some time ago, although one can’t help juxtapose the failure of this effort by Iranian security elements to penetrate Israel and carry out mass casualty terrorist attacks and/ or target top political and security individuals, against the dysfunction and chaos Israel has been able to sow with the exploding beepers and walkie-talkie operation in Lebanon and beyond. It does show the lengths to which Iran will try and go to destabilize its enemies.