Shlomo Brom, a former Brigadier General in the IDF, said: “Naturally, the two sides in such a conflict are trying to recruit agents or plant agents in their adversary’s territory for the purpose of intelligence gathering, subversion, and sabotage.
“In the past, some Iranian spies were captured in Israel and terrorist cells financed, armed, and operated by Iran in the West Bank were dealt with.
“One has to assume there are others that were not exposed and captured yet. My general impression is that Iran did not have much success in recruiting Israeli citizens and more success in recruiting Palestinians in the West Bank.
“I have not seen any indications of attempts of human agents to sabotage Israeli defenses other than the few that supplied the Iranian intelligence with information.
“In all these exposed cases the information Iran got was quite insignificant. However, Iran is quite active in cyber-attacks against Israel making use of the net, but these attacks are also still not so sophisticated.”
Richard Kemp, a retired British Army officer, is less convinced that there is a physical Iranian intelligence presence in Israel but highlights how Tehran has tried to “disrupt the Iron Dome” with help from its proxies, including Hamas.
He said: “I think it is less likely that such physical cells exist inside Israel although Iranian proxies certainly operate to foment violence in the West Bank and among Israeli Arabs.
“Of course, Israeli security services will be alert to the possibility of foreign agents in Israel. Iranian intelligence services do, however, use the internet to exploit and create internal divisions inside Israel and to collect defense and political intelligence.
“Most people who are targeted and recruited by Iranian intelligence will be unaware of who is orchestrating it as the Iranians of course pose as something completely different.
“They have exploited internal divisions such as judicial reforms and the tension between pressing forward with the war against Hamas and regaining the hostages.
“Iran has attempted numerous cyber-attacks against Israel with only very limited success given Israel’s cyber defenses. Hamas also has tried to neutralize and disrupt Iron Dome with cyberwar and in previous Gaza conflicts as well as this one the IDF has specifically attacked Hamas’ cyber capabilities.”
