New details were published on Thursday evening about the espionage affair involving two Air Force technicians.
Galei Tzahal military correspondent Doron Kadosh reported that the Iranians did not hesitate to set a high bar of demands, the most extreme of which was the request from one of the service members to assassinate the Commander of the Air Force, Major General Tomer Bar. According to the report, the soldier did not reject the offer outright, but told his handler that he would "look into it and try."
The Iranian's list of targets was extensive. It included requests to photograph the streets of residences of senior state and defense officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. The handlers took a special interest in Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. They also demanded images of Rothschild Boulevard and Kaplan Street in Aviv.
On the military level, the service members were asked to provide coordinates of an Iron Dome battery and air defense systems, photos of bases, and locations of senior pilots.
The contact between the soldiers and their handlers lasted an entire year, during which they conversed many times. Surprisingly, at the beginning, when the handler asked the soldier, "What monthly salary will satisfy you?" he only asked for $1,300.
Throughout the period, the soldier passed on information classified as "Confidential" about fighter jet systems from his technicians' course, but the Iranian agent dismissed the importance of the information and demanded "more serious and important" missions. Later, the soldier photographed a control tower, runways, and drones, but did not receive any financial compensation for this.
The soldier's attempts to prove his loyalty included photographing fighter jets on the base, but the Iranians continued to taunt him, claiming that it was "not enough" and demanding documentation of the takeoff.
Ahead of Operation Rising Lion in June 2025, the soldier was even offered a bribe of hundreds of dollars to cause the delayed takeoff of jets for operational activity, a task he refused to perform. In the end, after the soldier refused to perform an armed terror attack, the Iranians cut off contact. In a puzzling turn of events, the soldier continued to attempt to contact the handlers and even searched for other Iranian agents on social media, but Iranian intelligence, which suspected he was a double agent, chose to ignore him.