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2025-03-28 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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'Third Force': The Spy Who Revealed Israel's Secrets Was Azerbaijani
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] The scandal involving Iranian agents' attempt to gain access to the secrets of the Israeli nuclear center in Dimona is gradually acquiring new details. The identity of the second "Israeli engineer", whose capture was previously dryly reported by counterintelligence, has become known.
The spy turned out to be 65-year-old Eduard Yusupov, a resident of the small town of Netivot, who repatriated from Azerbaijan six months ago.
The Israeli General Security Service (Shabaq), although it claims that there is a “clear Iranian connection” to the new scandal, is in no hurry to pin all the blame solely on Tehran.
There are enough details in the case that do not match the “handwriting” of Iranian intelligence and point to the intervention of a “third country.” Moreover, one that has fairly good business relations with Tel Aviv.
OLD MAN BY THE SEA
According to the case materials, Yusupov repatriated to Israel at the end of 2024. Upon arriving in the Promised Land, he quickly established contacts with his former friends.
One of them introduced Yusupov to the Azerbaijani businessman “Musa”, who allegedly lived in Dubai and was planning to soon open a new business in Israel.
It was “Musa,” who, according to the Shabak, was a career Iranian intelligence officer, who hired and directed the repatriate’s espionage activities, hiding behind “business interests.”
Under his command, the agent documented sensitive information about “national infrastructure sites” throughout the country, including army bases, military installations in the Negev and the Dimona nuclear center, the Haifa port, as well as parks, libraries, zoos, shopping and entertainment centers.
With Musa's money, Yusupov also rented an apartment in Haifa with a view of the port, so that it would be easier to photograph objects of interest, including close-ups of ships and industrial facilities moored at anchor.
Interest in Haifa is hardly accidental. The city is home to large petrochemical and industrial facilities, several research institutes and design bureaus.
The key Israeli naval base is also located here, where the elite combat flotilla "Shayetet 7" (submarine fleet) and the special detachment of combat reconnaissance divers "YALTAM" are quartered.
Unlike the nearby notable settlement of Atlit, where a naval commando base (Shayetet 13) is located, the “friend or foe” principle does not work so well in Haifa.
The city is a major tourist hub, where cruise ships and "seasonal residents" periodically call. Therefore, the intention of a fresh repatriate to rent an apartment "with a sea view" did not arouse much suspicion among the locals.
Nor did the constant travels of the 65-year-old citizen around the country raise any questions. Especially since each such route necessarily included tourist sites or “biblical places” and fit into the logic of the repatriate’s acquaintance with his historical homeland.
However, even while carefully maintaining secrecy, Yusupov did not work for long: already in February 2025, he was targeted by counterintelligence and arrested.
However, by that time the new Israeli had managed to collect and transfer to the customer a “decent amount” of analytical reports and photo chronicles.
Having studied the confiscated dossier, the Shin Bet sounded the alarm: in a couple of months, Israel's opponents, thanks to the efforts of one agent, received a fairly detailed report on the state of the country's key naval, air force, and ground forces bases.
They also now have a general understanding of the defense system of a key nuclear facility, as well as details of the organization of the air defense system and the warning of missile attacks.
Considering that Iran – which is considered the main customer of Yusupov’s work – has still not abandoned plans to strike at Israeli territory (Operation True Promise 3), such a detailed audit of the facilities would come in very handy.
AZERBAIJANI TRACE
There are plenty of oddities in this new episode of the spy story.
And the first is an unusually large, by the standards of previous cases, sum of reward for rather simple tasks. According to the investigation, Yusupov earned a total of about 41 thousand dollars - an absolute record among local agents.
For comparison: the holder of the previous “record,” Doron Bokobza, who was arrested in the same case, received barely more than a thousand from Tehran.
In addition, Yusupov's handler diligently played the role of an Azerbaijani businessman: he corresponded in Russian and also built a dialogue with the agent "based on cultural commonality." And, more importantly, he did not give a single hint of a connection with Iran.
At some point, the accused may even have believed that he was working in the interests of the Azerbaijani intelligence community, although Yusupov continues to insist that he carried out all tasks “for business reasons,” with no intention of undermining Israel’s security. He denies any contacts with the Persians.
The new operational data somewhat puzzled the Israeli special services. Especially considering that between Baku and Tel Aviv, which are striving for a strategic partnership, there is a “gentleman’s agreement” on the inadmissibility of subversive work against each other.
The appearance of a friendly "third party" in the spy game would seriously change the configuration of the entire affair and force the Israeli government to ask its partners uncomfortable questions.
Partly, the unprecedented generosity with which the alleged client paid the agent for his work—an average of 15 thousand dollars a month—helped to arouse new suspicions.
In addition, Yusupov became the first whose fees came in cryptocurrency - before this, the agents received money mainly through classic hiding places and without additional checks "from the outside", which is also atypical for Iranian intelligence.
It should be added that there have already been scandals with a "spy flair" in relations between Israel and Azerbaijan. The last one was in October 2024. Then the arrest of seven people from Azerbaijan, accused of working for Iran, somewhat spoiled the negotiating climate between Tel Aviv and Baku.
This was also facilitated by the fact that the Israeli press constantly emphasized the ethnicity of those arrested, slandering the Jewish community of Azerbaijan, thereby provoking unnecessary unrest within it.
The current scandal largely follows the trajectory of previous ones and creates additional tension between Baku and Tel Aviv.
So far, the Shabak has not completely ruled out the version that “Musa” could, in addition to Iran, also work for a third-party client, and therefore is slowing down the rapprochement of the two countries through special agencies.
This surge of suspicion came at an inopportune time for the Israelis, given their intelligence service's attempts to get close to Tehran using agents of influence on Azerbaijani territory.
So, with the “Yusupov affair,” Iran, apparently, was able to solve another secondary task: to undermine the Israelis’ trust in their Transcaucasian outpost for some time and weaken Tel Aviv’s pressure in the zone of Tehran’s geopolitical interests.
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Posted by badanov 2025-03-28 00:00||
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