Israel alleges its citizens were being sought to spy for Iran

JERUSALEM - Israel's Shin Bet security agency said yesterday that it had broken up an Iranian plot to recruit Israelis of Iranian origin as spies, part of what it said was a burgeoning Iranian intelligence operation against the Jewish state.

The affair highlights a quirk in the hostile relations between the countries - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly calls for Israel's destruction but allows Israeli Jews with relatives in Iran to visit his country.

Israeli security officials said Shin Bet agents detained an Israeli who was returning from a visit to relatives among Iran's 25,000-member Jewish community. He told interrogators he was given money by Iranian intelligence operatives and asked to help them spy on Israel.

Shin Bet briefing documents obtained by the Associated Press did not specify when the man was picked up, whether he carried out the request, or whether he was released after questioning, but Israeli media reports said no charges had been brought.

"Over the past year Iranian intelligence has increased its activity against Israel," the papers said. "The Shin Bet has recently uncovered a number of attempts by Iranian intelligence to recruit Jews, Israeli citizens of Iranian descent, who went on family visits to Iran."

No specific number was given, but Israel Army Radio cited an unidentified senior Shin Bet officer as saying the agency uncovered 10 recruitment attempts in the last two years.

There was no comment from the Iranian government.

According to Israeli government figures, about 135,000 Israeli Jews trace their roots to Iran, which had good relations with Israel before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Army Radio said about 100 Israelis had visited relatives in Iran in the last two years. The Israeli documents said Iranian intelligence seized upon that fact as an opportunity to press Israeli-Iranians into espionage.

The documents said most of the recent Iranian recruitment attempts began at Iran's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

An engineer from Egypt's nuclear agency stole documents and gave them to Israel's Mossad intelligence service, a prosecutor said yesterday in Cairo, announcing the man's arrest on espionage charges. The man's family denied the accusation.

State security prosecutor Hisham Badawi said that Mohammed Sayed Saber, 35, was arrested Feb. 18 but that authorities withheld news of his

arrest during the probe.

Badawi said Saber gave "important documents" from the Atomic Energy Agency to Mossad agents in December in Hong Kong in return for $17,000.

Saber's family, however, said he was the one to tell authorities that the people he worked with in Hong Kong were suspicious.

In Jerusalem, Israel Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mark Regev voiced skepticism about the allegation.

- Associated Press

EndText