Two Israelis cleared of spying for Iran; third convicted of contact with enemy
Court finds all three were manipulated by alleged Iranian agent, none had intention of harming state security, though one woman should have balked at request to provide information
Two Israelis were cleared Wednesday of charges that they spied for Iran, while a third was convicted on a related charge, wrapping up a case that began with serious espionage accusations against five nationals with either personal or family ties to the Islamic Republic.
The three, a man and two women, faced charges of contact with a foreign agent and providing information that could be useful to the enemy.
Though the Jerusalem District Court cleared two of the accused, it found one of the women guilty of contact with an enemy agent. She had admitted to investigators that she harbored suspicions the man she was in contact with was working for the Iranian government.
The Shin Bet security service announced in January 2022 that it had arrested five Jewish Israelis accused of assisting Iranian operative Rambod Namdar, who often pretended to be a Jewish man, in gathering intelligence and making connections in Israel. The five suspects — four women and one man — were all Jewish immigrants from Iran or descendants of Iranian immigrants.
Two of the five suspects, both women, were previously cleared of the charges against them.
“There is no disputing that the beginning of the relationship… with the person alleged to be a foreign agent, was without knowing his identity and certainly not with the intention of establishing contact with a foreign agent and certainly not with the intention of harming state security,” Judge Ilan Sela said in his decision Wednesday.
“There is no doubt that these are Zionist people, lovers of the country, who had no intention, at any stage, to harm the security of the country,” he said of the defendants.
“We are talking about women who were looking for warmth and love, an attentive ear and sometimes even financial aid. Rambod, who is claimed to be a foreign agent, took advantage of this with his cunning, forged a long relationship with them, and with great sophistication and in a manipulative manner managed to use them for his needs.”
Sela noted that the suspects were not aware that the kind of information they provided, which is openly available to the public, “can be useful to the enemy.”
Regarding the convicted woman, a resident of Holon, Sela said, “There is quite a bit of information that she gave Rambod… that she should have thought might be useful to the enemy.”
“She had a real suspicion that this was an entity related to the Iranian government and the purpose of the contact with him was to get information,” he said. “This is particularly true in light of the fact that Rambod presented himself to the defendant as a Muslim, and especially when the defendant actually suspected, and from her words it even emerged that she knew, and unfortunately actually believed, that Rambod had contact with government bodies in Iran.”
One of the defendants, a resident of Beit Shemesh, said after the ruling, “I didn’t know, I always thought he was Jewish, I never had any intention of harming the State of Israel, it’s my country, I brought up six sons here, I gave it my soul,” the Kan public broadcaster reported.
Court documents showed that Namdar presented himself to most of the suspects as a wealthy Iranian contractor and to one of the suspects as a single, wealthy, Muslim from Tehran.
One of the defendants told Rambod that she works for a municipality and he asked for photos of City Hall. He also tried to convince her to persuade her son to join navy, air force, or intelligence units in the army. In December 2019, she told him of a trip she was making with her husband to Istanbul and arranged — without her husband’s knowledge — to bring him some items he asked for, including books in Hebrew.
The woman brought the items with her and was met outside her hotel by a stranger who gave her $3,000.
Another of the defendants was asked to photograph voting booths during elections in 2020 and 2021. Rambod also asked her to photograph various sites in Tel Aviv such as the central bus station, parks and police stations.
The Shin Bet had alleged the suspects took photographs of strategically significant sites in Israel, including the US embassy branch in Tel Aviv; attempted to form relationships with politicians; provided information about security arrangements at different sites; and committed other offenses — all at the direction of Namdar, in exchange for thousands of dollars.
According to the Shin Bet, none of the suspects involved in the case had access to significant classified material, and there was no indication that national security was seriously compromised.
One of the accused women reportedly attempted to take her own life in the wake of the accusations. Her husband — who was accused by the Shin Bet of being aware of the connection, speaking with the Iranian operative himself, and transporting her to the US Consulate to photograph it — accused the Shin Bet of abuse.
Namdar was reportedly in contact with around 20 other Israelis, the majority of them women.
The investigation and resulting indictments shed light on the rare and little-discussed phenomenon of Jews from Iran traveling to Israel to visit family.
