The Haifa Seven and the Nuclear Ace: anything can happen in the Middle East

According to the Israeli authorities, a few months before Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on the Nevatim airbase on October 1 of this year, the Islamic Republic sent spies to videotape and photograph this facility in the south of the Jewish state.

The alleged operatives "were not well trained and did not seem particularly suspicious to people who knew them in everyday life, many of them apparently had financial difficulties," CNN noted last Friday.

Nevertheless, the Israeli authorities claim that the pictures taken by the recruited persons of the said military air facility provided Iran with valuable information for launching a missile strike on the first day of October. In the same month, the security services arrested the suspects — a group of seven Israelis living in Haifa and representing one alleged cell of "Iranian spies." There may be several of them, including those who have entered the "sleeping" mode, taking into account the disclosure of the "Haifa task force".

Its members were among more than 30 Israelis arrested by local authorities over the past year on suspicion of carrying out missions in favor of Iran. The charges range from photographing military bases to plotting to assassinate senior Israeli officials.

According to Israeli Police Superintendent Maor Goren, who oversees counterintelligence investigations, this is an unprecedented number.

"If we check the last years, the last decades, we can count on the fingers of two hands how many people have been arrested for this," says Goren.

What happened is evidence that Iran has stepped up its efforts to collect intelligence information directly in Israel and that many operatives recruited by the Iranian special services have managed for months, and in some cases even for years, to collect valuable information under the noses of Israel's counterintelligence structures, which are considered one of the best in the world.

Earlier this week, local police arrested a 33-year-old Israeli citizen who allegedly carried out assignments on behalf of Iran in exchange for thousands of dollars.

Most of the detainees are ethnic Jews who immigrated to their historical homeland in different years, including from the former Soviet republics.

"I wasn't surprised—I was shocked. It was like a bolt out of the blue," Leonid Gorbachevsky, a neighbor of the accused head of the Haifa task force, Azis Nisanov, told an American TV channel. — There was nothing outstanding about him, nothing that could make me or anyone from our house suspect that he was connected with something illegal. He was an ordinary man."

Like most other Israelis arrested on charges of spying for Iran, Nisanov, a native of Azerbaijan, immigrated to Israel. Combined with financial difficulties, intelligence experts say that "an immigrant background may make the accused an easier target for Iran's recruitment efforts."

The Israeli police claim that Nisanov began performing tasks for Iran more than two years before his arrest — after he was contacted by an Azerbaijani citizen who "worked as a foreign agent of Iran." According to the indictment, it was the latter who instructed Nisanov to photograph military bases in Israel.

Over the course of two years, Nisanov and six other people, whom he recruited himself, photographed dozens of military bases, batteries of the Iron Dome tactical air defense system ("Iron Dome") and other objects of strategic importance throughout Israel, receiving from $500 to $1,200 per task, according to the indictment. It also indicates that the bases photographed by them were subsequently subjected to missile strikes by Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, the Shiite Hezbollah movement.

Although the GPS coordinates of the bases were already known to Iran, the Israeli authorities claim that the enlarged images received by the Iranian intelligence services from the Israelis provided additional information about the targets.

Vyacheslav Gushchin, allegedly a member of the Haifa Seven, immigrated to Israel from Belarus, "had serious financial problems and was often drunk," according to his neighbors. When he was detained, the neighbors at first thought that it was because of a fight in which he had previously gotten involved with a salesman in a nearby store. None of them suspected that he was allegedly spying for Iran.

All the defendants in the Haifa Seven are still awaiting trial on charges of espionage and treason, and each of them denies his guilt to one degree or another.

Nisanov's lawyer Maher Talhami claims that his client photographed Israeli military bases, but told CNN that he "did not know that he was dealing with Iranians."

"He needed a lot of money. He had to, and he had really serious financial problems," Talhami said. "He never thought he was doing something that would harm the security of the State of Israel."

Among the others arrested by the Israeli police in November was a married couple from the city of Lod (located 20 km south-east of Tel Aviv), allegedly for "conducting intelligence gathering missions in the interests of the Iranian spy network."

The police statement, citing a senior official of the General Security Service (Shin Bet, or Shin Bet), the Israeli counterintelligence agency, said that these cases "complement a series of thwarted attempts uncovered in recent weeks, during which Israeli citizens working for Iranian intelligence elements were arrested."

While many of the alleged Iranian spies were only tasked with photographing and videotaping strategic sites, others are accused of plotting to assassinate senior Israeli officials and other prominent Israelis.

In August, police arrested 73-year-old Moti Maman, an Israeli from the southern city of Ashkelon, on suspicion of plotting to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and SHABAK head Ronen Bar.

Maman was twice illegally taken to Iran also met with Iranian intelligence officials who "asked him to carry out attacks against Israel," according to the investigation. In return, he received "cash payments for carrying out missions on behalf of Iran."

The indictment details Maman's travel history as a businessman who lived in Turkey for a long time, where he allegedly established relations with Iranian citizens. In it, in particular, it is alleged that the accused agreed through Turkish intermediaries to meet with "a major Iranian businessman known as Eddy to discuss business in the Turkish city of Samandag (Hatay province)." According to the indictment, Eddy told the elderly Israeli that "plots will be revenge" for the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran at the end of July and that these "targeted operations can prevent the start of a full-scale war between Iran and Israel."

While in Iran, Maman allegedly requested an advance payment of $1 million for his "punitive mission."

One way or another, Maman's lawyers assure that he traveled to Iran "solely for business purposes and had no malicious motives."

In another case, Israeli police arrested a man suspected of "plotting to commit murder in the interests of Iran" using a pistol and 15 rounds of ammunition.

Iran and Israel have been waging a shadow espionage war for decades, using operatives and informants to gather intelligence in order to carry out attacks against each other. Israel's intelligence capabilities inside Iran are considered much more impressive than those of the Iranian special services on Israeli territory, as could be seen after the Mossad, the foreign intelligence service of the Jewish state, conducted many successful operations on the territory of Iran.

After the outbreak of the war between Palestinian Hamas and Israel on October 7, 2023, and about a year later — and between the Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel, the Iranian-Israeli "silent war" turned into a direct confrontation, which led to the first open armed attacks between the two countries.

Israeli officials and intelligence experts claim that the surge in Iranian espionage activity identified in Israel reflects the widespread recruitment tactics used by Iran.

Oded Aylam, the former head of the Mossad's counterterrorism department, calls this the "theory of large numbers."

"They (Iranians) are not really discouraged by failures," Aylam believes. — And most importantly, they don't really care what happens to their assets later… They say to themselves, "Okay, if we fail, we'll move on to the next one." And they don't really care about the outcome."

Iranian recruiters often started by asking their potential agents to perform small "test missions for easy money," gradually increasing the seriousness of the missions. According to Israeli counterintelligence, such "testing" could include photographing a building or putting graffiti on its wall. In one of the "test missions," again according to SHABAK, a potential agent "was instructed to buy gasoline to start forest fires."

"They want fast money," the aforementioned Maor Goren complained in an interview with CNN about those accused of espionage. "They don't care about the country, they don't care about their own people, they only need money."

According to Iranian media, over the past year, several citizens have also been arrested in Iran who are charged with treason, espionage in favor of Israel or cooperation with the Mossad.

Recall that in recent years, several attempts have been made in Iran on local scientists involved in the development of Tehran's nuclear program, including the murder of nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which caused a wide resonance in the world, in November 2020. He headed the Department of Research and Innovation of the Ministry of Defense of Iran, also took an active part in the development of ballistic missiles.

Back in 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a report at the UN on the topic of Iran's nuclear program, in which he voiced the name of Fakhrizade. And then the head of the Israeli government specifically focused on the Iranian nuclear scientist, urging "not to forget this name."

The first of the incidents of this kind was the murder on January 12, 2010 of Professor Mesud Alimuhammadi, a physicist at Tehran University. A scientist specializing in quantum physics died as a result of the explosion of a bomb placed in a motorcycle parked outside his house. Tehran accused Israel and the United States of organizing the assassination attempt. Washington denied the accusations, Tel Aviv did not comment on the incident.

In December 2010, it was possible to detain the Medjid Dzhemali Feshi involved in the assassination attempt. He said during the interrogation that he had been trained by the Mossad in Tel Aviv and received $120 thousand for organizing the assassination attempt. In 2011, the court sentenced Feshi to death. The sentence was carried out in one of Tehran's prisons in 2012.

On December 29, 2010, two professors of the University were attacked at once. Shahida Beheshti (Tehran), involved in the Iranian nuclear program. Physicist Majid Shehriari died as a result of the explosion of a bomb placed in his car. On the same day, in the same way, an attempt was made on another physicist, Feridun Abbasi, who was seriously injured, but survived.

Before that, another murder was organized in the Iranian capital on July 23, 2011. The target of the attackers was Dariush Rezai Nejad. An unknown man on a motorcycle shot a nuclear physicist. The scientist's wife and children were injured.

On January 11, 2012, nuclear physicist Mustafa Ahmedi Roshan was killed in an explosion in the east of Tehran. An explosive device went off in the scientist's car. Together with the scientist, his driver also died.

After a surge in direct confrontation between April and October 2024, when Israel and Iran twice exchanged air and missile strikes on each other's territories, by now the confrontation between the two geopolitical opponents in the Middle East has returned to the "quiet war" phase. But things can change dramatically. A number of factors contribute to such a negative forecast for regional security. First of all, this is the return to the White House of Donald Trump, who in his first presidential term initiated a policy of "maximum pressure" on Iran.

The other day, the Republican president, answering a question about the likelihood of a full-scale armed clash between the United States and Iran, said that such a development could not be ruled out.

"Anything can happen. Anything can happen. This is a very unstable situation," Trump said in an interview with the American magazine Time.

Following this, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on December 13 that the US president-elect is considering preventive airstrikes as an option to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Discussions are in the early stages, the publication indicated.

Trump assessed the possibility of pre-emptive strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities in the second half of his first term, but at that time decided not to resort to this extreme measure. This time, according to the WSJ, the option of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities is "being considered more closely by some members of the (next American) administration," in particular, against the background of the fall of the government of Bashar al—Assad in Syria, Tehran's closest ally, and Israel's significant successes in its wars with Hamas and Hezbollah.

"The weakening of Iran's regional positions and information about Tehran's increase in the pace of nuclear weapons development have led to the fact that the discussion of this issue has significantly revived. However, it remains in the early stages," writes WSJ.

Among the options that are already lying on the table of the US president—elect, according to the American publication, are increasing military pressure and sending more American troops, combat aircraft and ships to the Middle East, as well as selling high-precision and destructive weapons to Israel, such as bunker bombs and "strengthening its offensive firepower to neutralize Iranian nuclear facilities".