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Israeli state prosecutors on Wednesday filed an indictment against a 14-year-old boy from central Israel, accusing him of carrying out intelligence-gathering missions for Iranian operatives in exchange for cryptocurrency, in what authorities describe as the latest case in an accelerating pattern of Tehran-directed espionage that has increasingly drawn in minors.
The teenager was charged in the Tel Aviv Juvenile District Court with maintaining contact with a foreign agent, passing intelligence to the enemy, and obstruction of justice, among other offenses. Because the defendant is a minor, identifying details are barred from publication and the indictment itself was not publicly released.
The case is among the most striking illustrations yet of Iran's widening recruitment campaign inside Israel, which security officials have warned about for months, and which the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency says has grown dramatically since the outbreak of the war with Hamas in October 2023.
According to the indictment, filed by attorney Livnat Melamed of the Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office, the boy responded to what appeared to be a job advertisement in a Telegram group in April 2025. He began corresponding with a handler who arranged for him to carry out tasks in return for payment in cryptocurrency deposited into a digital wallet. Prosecutors say the teenager suspected the contact was linked to Iranian elements but continued his activities regardless.
The minor opened four digital wallets, into which the handler transferred a total of more than $1,170.
Among the missions he allegedly completed were filming videos lasting several minutes in streets near Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, known as Ichilov Hospital, and in neighborhoods of Ramat Gan, where an elderly couple was killed in an Iranian missile strike on March 18, 2026. He also recorded footage of the Tel Aviv skyline while identifying the location of the Kirya, Israel's military headquarters complex.
The teenager is further accused of spraying pro-Iranian graffiti across Tel Aviv, including slogans reading "We are committed to the covenant," and sending documentation of the vandalism back to his handler.
In one of the more audacious alleged assignments, the boy was instructed to spy on Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar's daily movements and to vandalize his home with a message reading "We will take revenge in turn! Ruhollah's children," a reference to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. The defendant told his Iranian contact he could not carry out the mission during the school year, prosecutors said, and that it would have to wait until a vacation.
The Iranian handler also enlisted the 14-year-old to rent an apartment near IDF headquarters. Although the teen contacted several landlords in the area and sent a photo of a property to his handler, he never secured a rental.
After being detained and questioned, prosecutors allege, the boy attempted to obstruct the investigation by persuading a classmate to lie during interrogation and claim he was the source of most of the funds seized from the defendant's digital wallets.
The indictment lands amid what Israeli authorities describe as an unprecedented wave of Iranian espionage targeting Israeli citizens of all backgrounds, with a particular emphasis on young people vulnerable to online recruitment.
In a public warning issued in September 2024, the Shin Bet said Iran had stepped up efforts to recruit Israelis for espionage purposes, including through online approaches framed as paid work. The agency described a familiar escalation: initial tasks that appear harmless, such as hiding cash, distributing flyers, or painting graffiti, that quickly evolve into requests involving surveillance of public figures or physical harm.
In January 2026, the Shin Bet reported that 25 Israelis and foreign residents were indicted for spying for Iran in 2025, and that the number of Iranian plots to use Israelis as spies had surged 400 percent compared with 2024, which itself had seen a similar 400 percent increase over the prior year. The agency said 120 separate Iranian espionage incidents were thwarted in 2025.
The current case is not the first involving a minor. In May 2025, the Shin Bet and police arrested a 16-year-old from the Shfela region on suspicion of performing multiple tasks for Iranian actors, including burying cash, photographing sites, and burning items bearing anti-government slogans. Another prior case reportedly involved a 13-year-old boy from Tel Aviv recruited via Telegram.
In a separate high-profile case disclosed last week, authorities announced the arrest and indictment of Raz Cohen, a 26-year-old IDF reservist from Jerusalem who served in the Iron Dome air defense system.
A joint investigation found that Cohen had been in contact with an Iranian intelligence handler for about a month via Telegram beginning in December 2025 and had passed along sensitive details about the workings of the Iron Dome system, the locations of Israeli Air Force bases, and the positions of Iron Dome batteries. Cohen sent his handler 27 photos and videos showing firing processes, rates of fire, and arming procedures, receiving approximately $1,000 in cryptocurrency.
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