Surprise pick for Shin Bet chief once served as the Commander of the Navy, never worked at the intelligence agency.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his selection of Major General Eli Sharvit as the new head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency on Monday morning.

Sharvit, a surprise pick, was not on the short list of three possible candidates widely reported by Hebrew-language media.

The selection of Sharvit is also unusual because he is not current employed by the Shin Bet, nor did he ever serve in the agency.

A married father of three, Sharvit grew up in the southern city of Beersheba.

Sharvit served as the commander of the Navy between 2016 and 2021, leading “the creation of the maritime defense force in the economic waters” and managing “complex operational systems against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

After retiring from the military after 36 years, Sharvit became the president of a private company in Israel’s defense sector.

Notably, one of Netanyahu’s major political rivals praised his choice.

Opposition MK Gadi Eizenkot, who was once the IDF’s Chief of Staff, said that Sharvit was “a leader and commander with a professional and ethical backbone, who has excelled in all his positions in the IDF.”

He added that “from many years of acquaintance [with Sharvit], I am confident that he will advance the organization according to its mission and will be loyal to the State of Israel.”

In a 2021 interview with Ynet, Sharvit warned that Iran may use unorthodox maritime solutions to evade economic sanctions.

“The Iranian issue becomes complex when the Iranian economic system is under sanctions, and then Iran tries every creative way to transfer money to finance terrorist organizations,” he told the Hebrew-language outlet at the time.

“We need to worry about how to prevent them from using the maritime medium both as an economic route and for transferring weapons,” Sharvit added.

The post Who is Eli Sharvit, the new head of the Shin Bet? appeared first on World Israel News.

Israeli authorities have not been forthcoming regarding the number of terrorists believed to have invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7th.

By World Israel News Staff

The Shin Bet intelligence agency has formed an entirely new unit exclusively dedicated to tracking down and assassinating the Hamas operatives who participated in the October 7th incursion, which marked the deadliest incident for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

The new unit was dubbed NILI, a Hebrew acronym which means “The Eternity of Israel Will Not Lie.”

“An old proverb says that ‘every dog has its day.’ The [unit] is made up of operations and intelligence personnel who have one mission: to close the score, settle accounts and eliminate all…[those] who took part in the raid and returned to Gaza,” confirmed Avi Issacharoff, a prominent Israeli intelligence expert and the creator of the TV show Fauda, on social media platform X.

“One by one, dog dog. Hope they will make it to everyone soon,” he added.

The majority of those who will be targeted by the unit are members of Hamas’ special forces unit, the Nukhba Brigade, which led the offensive that killed some 1,400 in Israel.

Israeli authorities have not been forthcoming regarding the number of terrorists believed to have invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7th.

While Israel claims to be holding the bodies of some 1,500 terrorists who participated in the attacks, the majority of the perpetrators are believed to have successfully returned back to the Gaza Strip following the brutal rampage.

Several major players in the attacks have already been assassinated by Israeli security forces. Nukhba Brigade commander Ali Qadhi and Bilal Al Kadri, who led the offensive on kibbutz Nirim, were both killed in airstrikes in the Gaza Strip last week.

According to Hebrew language media, NILI will operate independently from other Shin Bet divisions.

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American officials told their Israeli counterparts that the breach is being investigated, ‘reassuring’ them that intelligence secrets are safe with the Pentagon.

By World Israel News Staff

American officials are reaching out to their Israeli counterparts to “reassure” them after an explosive U.S. intelligence leak suggested that Washington spied on Israel, as well as researched how to pressure Jerusalem into abandoning its neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

According to an Axios report, several Pentagon officials “urged their counterparts in the Israeli Defense Ministry to not overreact” to the leak. American officials also said that they are investigating the source of the breach.

Another highly classified document made public in the leak highlighted U.S. intelligence’s belief that the Mossad – Israel’s storied security agency – was actively involved in encouraging its employees to participate in anti-government protests, and that members of the body were organizing and attending demonstrations without revealing their affiliation with the agency.

After the American report on Mossad involvement in demonstrations was made public, the security agency released a statement vehemently denying the veracity of the document.

“The publication in the American press is completely false and absurd,” the Mossad said.

“The Mossad and its officials did not and do not encourage employees in the organization to go to demonstrations against the government, to political demonstrations in general, or to any political activity.”

However, Israeli officials have so far remained mum regarding a document which outlined scenarios in which Jerusalem could be forced to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine – a scenario which the Jewish State has tried to avoid since the onset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Eyal Zamir, the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, is set to visit Washington next week to discuss the leak, Axios reported.

U.S. officials are connecting with their counterparts in allied countries “to reassure them of our commitment to safeguarding intelligence and the fidelity of securing our partnerships,” State Department Spokesman Verdant Patel confirmed in a recent briefing.

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“That’s a line the Mossad is not supposed to cross, and you could expect repercussions,” says analyst after spy agency reportedly took sides in political conflict.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Employees of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency participated in the anti-judicial reform protests and its officials encouraged Israeli citizens to join the mass anti-government demonstrations, according to confidential intelligence documents from the Pentagon that were leaked online.

Some of the Mossad’s most senior and high-ranking staff “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government,” the document reads, according to a New York Times summary of the trove of leaked information.

Junior Mossad employees were given permission to take part in the demonstrations, but were instructed not to reveal that they are affiliated with the storied spy agency, the document added.

Senior intelligence officials denied the report in the statement to the New York Times, which confirmed the authenticity of the document as a genuine analysis by U.S. military intelligence.

As an intelligence agency focused on national security, the Mossad is meant to be a nonpartisan body that does not meddle in internal policies or government matters. The alleged endorsement of the anti-government protests by the Mossad would mark a serious change in the entity’s modus operandi and seriously undermine trust between the government and the body.

“If accurate, this is a dramatic change in procedure by Mossad’s leadership and puts Israel in unprecedented territory,” Natan Sachs, Director of the Brookings Institution Center for Middle East Policy, told the Washington Post.

“If they were organizing against Netanyahu’s reforms in their official capacity, then it’s a true scandal,” Sachs added. “That’s a line the Mossad is not supposed to cross, and you could expect repercussions.”

Framed as a grassroots movement by the mainstream media, senior government officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – have cast doubt on the origins of the protests, which have seen hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets in recent months.

A senior confidant of Netanyahu said that the protests are being paid for and organized in part by an Israeli NGO that receives generous funding from the U.S. State Department – a claim which was later backed up by a Washington Free Beacon investigation.

In a statement, the Mossad vehemently denied the report.

“The publication in the American press is completely false and absurd,” the Mossad said.

“The Mossad and its officials did not and do not encourage employees in the organization to go to demonstrations against the government, to political demonstrations in general, or to any political activity.”

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Unlike Iran’s outgoing Minister of Intelligence, who had no previous experience in security or intelligence, Esmaeil Khatib has been involved with both.

By Dr. Ardavan Khoshnood and Erfan Fard, BESA Center

Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as the new president of the Islamic Republic of Iran on August 5, 2021. Six days later, he released his cabinet selections. Raisi chose cleric Esmaeil Khatib as Minister of Intelligence. Khatib will be the regime’s eighth Minister of Intelligence, succeeding Mahmoud Alavi.

Who is Khatib?

Information on Khatib is scarce. He was born in 1961-62 and is an influential cleric with close ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This is no surprise, as he was Khamenei’s student when studying Islamic jurisprudence. He was also a student of Muhammad Fazel Lankarani, Naser Makarem Shirazi, and Mojtaba Tehrani; all of them are radical Islamists.

Lankarani was a die-hard supporter of Ayatollah Rohollah Khomeini, supported the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and issued a fatwa in 2006 against Azeri physician and writer Rafiq Tagi, who was later assassinated. Makarem Shirazi was highly influential in the preparing of the constitution of the Islamic Republic. He is mostly known for his objection to allowing females to watch sporting events. In 2010, Shirazi stated that “the Holocaust is nothing but superstition.” Mojtaba Tehrani was a student of Khomeini and is very close to the incumbent Supreme Leader. He is known primarily for his support for the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist theory.

Khatib is thus a highly conservative and radical cleric with close ties to the Islamic establishment and to Ali Khamenei.

Khatib´s prior positions

Unlike Mahmoud Alavi, the outgoing Minister of Intelligence, who had no previous experience in security or intelligence, Khatib has been involved with both. He does not, however, have a formal education in intelligence studies or political science. His expertise lies solely in Islamic jurisprudence.

In 1980-81, after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was established, Khatib, then in his early twenties, joined the precursor of the IRGC Intelligence Organization. His exact role is unknown, though it is believed that he was highly active in the killing of Iranian opponents of the new Islamic regime who resided in Iranian Kurdistan. During that period, Khatib cooperated closely with Mohsen Rezaee, now a major general of the IRGC and secretary of the powerful Expediency Discernment Council.

In November 1997, Khatib was appointed head of the Ministry of Intelligence regional branch in Qom by then Minister of Intelligence Ali Fallahian, another conservative cleric close to Khamenei. In 1992, during Fallahian´s tenure, the Mykonos Restaurant assassinations occurred. The restaurant, which was in Berlin, was attacked by terrorists sent from Iran to eliminate Iranian opposition members. Several Iranians were killed in the attack. A German court placed the blame on the Islamic regime’s most senior leaders, including Fallahian. The AMIA attack in Argentina in 1994 also occurred while Fallahian was Minister of Intelligence, leading to his being placed on an Interpol wanted list by Argentina.

Khatib was previously head of the Security Department of the Astan Quds Razavi (AQR), a trust that manages the shrine of Imam Reza. The head of the AQR between 2016 and 2019 was current president Ebrahim Raisi, who left the position when he was appointed Chief Justice of Iran.

Beside the above positions, Khatib has worked directly for Ali Khamenei in his administration (the “House of Leadership”) and also served as Iran’s chief warden for several years.

The Ministry of Intelligence under Khatib

Khatib has been installed as the new Minister of Intelligence at a time when the Islamic regime is being bombarded by one catastrophe after another. Tehran is struggling to keep the country safe from infiltrations, attacks on its nuclear plants, and assassination attempts on its most important human assets. Iranian intelligence and counterintelligence are deeply compromised, and conflicts roil between the Ministry of Intelligence and the IRGC Intelligence Organization. These factors were without doubt of the utmost importance when Khatib was selected.

Khatib is not only very close to Raisi and trusted by him, but also a loyal servant of Supreme Leader Khamenei. It is understandable, therefore, that he was selected to purge the Iranian intelligence community and make its counterintelligence and information protection more effective and secure. He has strong experience in intelligence and counterintelligence, the blessing and trust of the Supreme Leader as well as the country’s most powerful ayatollahs, and perhaps most importantly, he is trusted by the IRGC. Khatib is thus expected not only to “clean up” the Iranian intelligence community but also to diminish the ongoing conflict between the IRGC Intelligence Organization and the Ministry of Intelligence. We will probably see closer cooperation between the two.

During Khatib´s tenure, the Ministry of Intelligence is likely to be more aggressive on both the domestic and international fronts. Domestically, the use of torture and arbitrary arrests of opponents of the regime will increase as the ministry grows more proactive. In the region, we will probably see a more sectarian Iran. Khatib´s brand of Islamism, which puts him in the company of the most radical ayatollahs in Iran, will inevitably affect his decision-making. In the US and Europe, Iranian dissidents will be subjected to intensified surveillance and espionage. Islamic terrorism around the world at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran will increase in intensity.

While Iran will be careful not to provoke the Western world, it will be much more ready to use terrorism and violence to eliminate opponents of the regime as well as anyone it considers a threat to the regime.

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Chinese researchers who tried to warn of the outbreak suddenly “disappeared,” the intelligence dossier said.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

Whether or not the coronavirus came out of a lab, five intelligence agencies agree that China misled the world about its dangers.

A 15-page joint intelligence dossier prepared by Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, and the UK accuses China of deliberately covering up the coronavirus threat long before warning the world about it on January 20, reported the Australian Telegraph.

Citing the intelligence dossier, Chinese researchers who tried to warn of the outbreak suddenly “disappeared” and research evidence was destroyed, all while the Chinese government kept downplaying the coronavirus threat to the world.

According to the report, the first person to disappear was Huang Yan Ling, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and thought to be “patient zero.”

In a statement, the institute denied Ling was patient zero and insisted that she was still alive, but her whereabouts were unknown. Other whistleblowers, such as businessman Fang Bin, lawyer Chen Qiushi and former state TV reporter Li Zehua were all arrested for telling the truth.

As part of a mass “suppression and destruction of evidence,” live samples of the virus was destroyed, evidence of asymptomatic cases, known as “silent carriers” was “buried,” and Wuhan ‘s wet markets were bleached down to remove any traces of evidence.

The Chinese government purged the internet of coronavirus research publications and censored related coronavirus web search terms such as “Wuhan Seafood market,” “Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia” and “SARS variations” reported the dossier.

Furthermore, China publicly downplayed the coronavirus threat while simultaneously quarantining Wuhan’s 11 million citizens.

The report was divided as to whether the deadly virus originated in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, an institute that researches dangerous novel pathogens that have no cure, such as coronavirus strains in bats.

On Thursday, a reporter asked President Donald Trump if he had seen any proof that the coronavirus was developed at the institute.

“Yes I have. Yes I have,” Trump said, without divulging any further information.

“Whether they [China] made a mistake, or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose?” he said.

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The Israeli intelligence agency provided key information to its Danish counterpart to save Iranian dissidents from being murdered by Iranian government agents.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel’s Mossad helped Danish security foil an Iranian-backed attempt to assassinate members of an Iranian dissident group who had found asylum in the Nordic country, it was reported Wednesday.

A senior Israeli official said that the Mossad had provided the Danes with key information that led to the arrest ten days ago of a Norwegian citizen of Iranian descent in the Swedish city of Goteborg on suspicion of plotting to assassinate the leader of the Danish branch of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA).

Two other suspected members of the group who lived in Denmark were also reportedly targeted by the Iranian-backed cell.

The ASMLA is an Arab nationalist insurgent group that advocates a separate Arab ethnic state in Khuzestan Province in Persian-dominated Iran. It is classified as a terrorist group by the Iranian government, which blames it for killing 25  during a military parade in the city of Ahvaz in late September, including soldiers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

On Tuesday, Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said, “We are dealing with an Iranian intelligence agency planning an attack on Danish soil. Obviously, we can’t and won’t accept that.”

Copenhagen’s immediate steps include calling for new European Union sanctions against the Islamic Republic, as well as recalling its ambassador “for consultations.”

British premier Theresa May quickly voiced support for Denmark’s position during a meeting in Oslo of northern European leaders, and Danish leader Lars Lokke Rasmussen tweeted his appreciation, adding his determination to “stand up to Iran” together with the U.K, and other countries.

Those countries might go beyond the EU as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated Denmark on its moves and called for its “allies and partners to confront the full range of Iran’s threats to peace and security.”

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President Donald Trump says he “appreciates the fact that they found what they found” following the revelation that Trump transition team members were “unmasked” by US intelligence agencies before his inauguration.

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