Iranian Spies’ Success at Recruiting a Former Israeli Government Minister Isn’t the Coup It Seems to Be

June 26 2018

News broke last week that Gonen Segey, a former Knesset member and minister of energy and infrastructure, had been arrested in Israel on charges of spying for Iran. Segev, who had previously served a prison term for drug smuggling, fraud, and forgery, has been out of office since 1996. Eran Lerman tries to make sense of this turn of events:

If [Iranian intelligence] did, in fact, see Segev as an asset worth cultivating, it raises questions as to the value of the information he supplied and the priority given to the information Iranian intelligence was tasked with obtaining. We can already say with certainty that this was not information about plans by the Israeli government that would deter Iran. For some time now, Segev has not had access to that kind of information, and his conviction for drug dealing has kept him at a distance from power players. . . .

[T]he Iranians—seeking to destroy Israel—are mainly interested in identifying targets to attack, especially major ones. The former energy minister is an asset who can produce a lot in this area, as someone who was responsible for sensitive infrastructure systems.

It is hard to say how much damage has been done and it will be discovered only through a detailed investigation. But even if we are satisfied with what we already know, we can understand plenty about Iran and its goals and the limits of the Iranian intelligence community’s capabilities. If this is the best they could do, Israel’s proven intelligence superiority is in no danger.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Intelligence, Iran, Israel & Zionism

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023