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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Child Spies: Israeli Secret Service Confused by Triple Agents |
| 2025-05-21 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Leonid Tsukanov [REGNUM] The "intelligence war" between Iran and Israel continues. This time, a 16-year-old teenager, who was under investigation by both the Iranians and the Israelis, has come under counterintelligence's scrutiny. The incident has sparked heated debate. The defense and prosecution versions of the double agent differ dramatically, and it is not entirely clear from them whether the young man acted entirely independently or became a “collateral damage” in an ill-conceived operation by Israeli security forces. However, while the investigation into the youngest spy was underway, a blow to Israel’s security was dealt by those whom the country’s intelligence services had considered their shadow allies for several years. THE SPY FROM SHEPHELAH In mid-May, the Israel Security Service (Shabaq) reported the arrest of a 16-year-old teenager from Shefela, accused of working for Iranian intelligence. According to the investigation, the Iranian handlers assigned the youth simple operations to equip hiding places, photograph city objects and prepare propaganda materials. Moreover, the Iranians even tried to organize a face-to-face meeting with the new agent on the territory of a third country in order to deepen contact, but these plans were thwarted by counterintelligence. The plot of the case, at first glance, is not much different from other similar cases. The teenager became the eighteenth person involved in a large-scale campaign to combat Iranian agents in Israel and even carried out the same tasks as other Iranian "pawns". However, there are some specific features. For example, at some point the teenager himself informed the authorities about contacts with representatives of a hostile state and even allegedly received instructions from operatives on how to safely interrupt communication with the recruiter. However, as noted by the Shabak, the young man did not heed the advice and continued to interact with his Iranian curator, for which he was soon detained. The prosecution insists that the arrested man acted “solely out of selfish motives,” flaunting his status as an agent of several countries and counting on rewards from both Iran and Israel. This is hardly entirely true. The Iranians clearly did not place a serious bet on the teenager (due to his inexperience and difficulty in control), but they could well have tried to use him to briefly divert counterintelligence attention from larger and more important figures in the spy network. And this bet partly justified itself - the case of the "spy from Shefela" really did push aside other scandals for a short time. FALSE TRAIl The Shefela "double agent" is far from the only one to stir up the Israeli public. Much greater damage to the reputation of the Jewish state's intelligence services was caused by a large-scale intelligence failure in the Gaza Strip, which developed according to a similar scenario. Shortly before the start of Operation Gideon's Chariots in Gaza (May 2025), the Israeli press, close to the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made a sensational statement: it turns out that the wide network of Palestinian agents created in Gaza before the conflict, considered the "eyes and ears" of the Israeli intelligence services in the enclave, had in fact been working for Hamas all these years and misinforming official Tel Aviv. The agents not only concealed Hamas' plans to break out of Gaza on October 7, 2023 (which effectively caught the intelligence services and the army off guard), but also disrupted Israeli operations to eliminate the movement's functionaries several times. Thus, these agents only pretended to work for the enemy, i.e. they were no longer double, but triple agents. For example, thanks to them, Izz ad-Din al-Haddad, commander of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza, who is now tipped to become the head of Hamas, escaped the IDF's attack in mid-2024. The Israelis still cannot figure out his new location. In addition, Hamas actively used the services of “Israeli” agents to provide official Tel Aviv with false information about the mood in the enclave and among the movement’s command staff, about the number and combat readiness of the underground and the condition of the hostages. The “game” became especially active on the eve of new rounds of negotiations, which partly explains the extraordinary flexibility of the Israeli delegation on a number of issues – for example, their readiness to support the ceasefire regime introduced in the enclave in January 2025. However, in the case of false agents in the ranks of Hamas, Israeli security officials eventually managed to rectify the situation by involving less senior, but more reliable sources in the case, including representatives of competing Palestinian factions. As a result, by the start of Operation Gideon's Chariots, the security services and the army had managed to inflict a number of painful defeats on the Palestinians, including the elimination of Hamas leader Mohammad Sinwar and a number of his associates. DARK PLACES Although the aforementioned spy scandals fit well into the logic of the current “intelligence war” in the Middle East, they contain many controversial points. Thus, in the case of the teenager from Shefela, the picture of the situation presented by the Shin Bet is strikingly different from the arguments of the lawyers. The defense insists that the teenager agreed to cooperate with foreign intelligence under pressure from circumstances—anonymous recruiters knew his home address and information about family members. The law enforcement officers to whom he complained about the persecution were unable to guarantee him protection and preferred to “pass the buck” to their colleagues from counterintelligence. At the same time, the Shin Bet also decided not to disrupt the recruitment, preferring to use the potential Iranian agent “in the dark” to reach out to other potential agents of the network, which is at odds with the statements of counterintelligence agents about the “extensive briefing” of the arrested man. And by doing so, they de facto pushed the teenager to cooperate with the enemy. As a result, the young man found himself drawn into a dangerous game in which he was left on the receiving end. The situation partly echoes the “Hoffman affair,” which thundered across the country in 2024. At that time, military intelligence colonel Roman Hoffman (now a general and military secretary to the prime minister) and several of his subordinates recruited a 16-year-old Israeli to carry out controlled leaks of classified information through his Telegram channel. However, after counterintelligence intervened, the military distanced itself from the newly minted agent, and he spent almost a year in prison on charges of disclosing classified information - more than 44 days of which were spent in interrogations by the Shin Bet. It is highly likely that the current spy story was also the result of excessive self-confidence on the part of some operatives. The hype surrounding the case of the “Hamas triple agents” appears to be man-made and serves a more obvious purpose. In particular, the repeated refrain that it was the re-recruited Hamas agents who “blinded” counterintelligence damages the reputation of the outgoing Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, with whom the Israeli authorities have had a protracted conflict. It was Baru who is credited with the initiative to massively convert former Hamas supporters in order to have eyes and ears in the most remote parts of the enclave. It is quite possible that when developing the operation, the Shin Bet chief was guided by the successful experience of recruiting Musab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the founders of Hamas, especially since he subsequently supplied Tel Aviv with valuable intelligence for more than ten years. However, due to the lack of sufficient leverage over the newly-minted agents, the attempt failed. If the matter goes beyond newspaper attacks and escalates into a court case (as Israeli hawks are gradually calling for), it will finally knock not only Bar out of the saddle, but also his closest associates. And in the future, it will allow the Prime Minister’s office to lobby for a convenient candidate for the high post and thereby finally purge counterintelligence of old opponents. |
| Posted by:badanov |