Israel says it foiled Iranian plot to target, spy on senior Israeli politicians

Israel arrested five Palestinians in a plot allegedly hatched in Iran to target and spy on senior Israeli politicians, including Israel's far-right national security minister, the country’s internal security agency said Wednesday.

The Shin Bet security service alleged that an Iranian security official living in neighbouring Jordan had recruited three Palestinian men in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and another two Palestinian citizens of Israel to gather intelligence about several high-profile Israeli politicians.

The targets included National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – a firebrand Israeli settler leader who oversees the country's police force in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ultranationalist government – as well as Yehuda Glick, an American-born far-right Israeli activist and former member of parliament.

The plan was foiled by Israeli intelligence officials, the Shin Bet said, without offering evidence.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.

Ben-Gvir, who draws inspiration from a racist rabbi , has provoked outrage across the wider Middle East for his particularly hardline policies against the Palestinians, anti-Arab rhetoric and stunts and frequent stormings of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

The Shin Bet did not elaborate on the identity of the Iranian official in Jordan who allegedly orchestrated the plot. He is not in custody and apparently remains at large.

But the Shin Bet accused three Palestinian men in the West Bank – identified as 47-year old Murad Kamamaja, 34-year-old Hassan Mujarimah and 45-year-old Ziad Shanti – of gathering intelligence and smuggling weapons into Israel. The security service also said that it charged two Palestinian citizens of Israel over their involvement in the plot. It did not specify how the men planned to target Ben-Gvir and the other politicians.

Ben-Gvir claimed that the Palestinian suspects had conspired to "assassinate a minister in Israel," without clarifying whether he meant himself or another minister. He thanked Israeli security forces for uncovering and capturing what he called the “terrorist squad.”

Ben-Gvir, who has pushed for harsher treatment for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, also vowed to double down on his hard-line policies in response to the revelations. "I will continue to act fearlessly and even more vigorously for a fundamental change in the conditions of the terrorists’ imprisonment," he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Israel has considered Iran to be its greatest enemy since it became a Shia theocracy during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iran is a main patron of Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, which Israel considers the most potent military threat on its borders, and also backs Palestinian Islamist militant groups in the besieged Gaza Strip.