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An Israeli citizen was arrested after allegedly accepting money from Iran to assassinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it has been revealed.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar announced today that Tehran was behind a plot to kill senior officials in Israel following the assassination of Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh in late July.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and other top Israeli officials were also named as Iranian targets claimed to have been uncovered by Israeli intelligence.
Iran allegedly sought to employ an Israeli businessman with extensive time spent in Turkey to develop a plot on Netanyahu’s life within Israel.
Plans were said to have been underway as early as April this year, when Turkish citizens reached out to the Israeli businessman to talk through the plan.
Netanyahu allegedly faced assassination attempts after the death of Haniyeh in Tehran in July
Andrei Farouk Aslan and Guneid Aslan were named as the intermediaries serving to connect the alleged assassin with Iran via Turkey.
They were alleged to have met with the unidentified Israeli citizen in Samandag in May to meet and discuss the plot.
The Israeli businessman was alleged to have requested one million dollars before agreeing to anything.
Israeli intelligence understands he then received 5,000 euros as he underwent training in Iran.
As part of his work for Iran, he was allegedly requested to take videos of Israeli sites for surveillance and intelligence gathering purposes, and threaten other Israelis who Iran had already approached that were not complying with their own spy missions.
Iran is understood to have asked the businessman to try to recruit Russians and Americans capable of killing Iranian figures opposed to the regime.
Shin Bet, an Israeli intelligence agency, did not suggest how far the suspect had got with his missions.
They stressed that foiling one plot did not end the overarching threats facing Israel.
Only last week, Shin Bet uncovered what it said was a plot by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defence official, who was subsequently identified as the former army Chief of Staff and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
The businessman was indicted on Thursday.
Iran had vowed swift retaliation after Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike in Tehran on July 31.
Drones and missiles were fired into Israel in April, following the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends his first press conference on September 16
But it was not clear how Iran intended to deliver ‘revenge’ for the attack on Haniyeh.
Israel announced the alleged attempt on the life of its Prime Minister as clashes continued with Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel announced yesterday that it was entering a new stage of its war after sudden explosions rippled through parts of Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Israel has not taken responsibility for the detonations of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies introduced by Hezbollah to avoid Israel hacking mobile phones.
But Defence Minister Yoav Gallant acknowledged ‘the results are very impressive’.
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