Israel says Iran tried to recruit agents via Facebook

Israel’s internal safety agency on Monday accused Iran of using a fake Facebook profile to try and get Israelis to gather statistics and damage people in the united states of America.

Shin Bet’s allegation comes days after Israel claimed that the Islamic Republic of Iran had plotted to assassinate an Israeli diplomat in Turkey, as worldwide powers searching to revive a nuclear deal with Tehran.

According to the Shin Bet, the profile of a young Jewish-Canadian woman called Sara Puppi with ties in Israel was fake and belonged to an Iranian agent using the social network to befriend primarily Israelis.

After contact was made, Puppi would use the WhatsApp messaging app to try and persuade her new friends “to gather information on Israeli figures while gauging their willingness to harm them, using pressure and promising thousands of dollars”, the Shin Bet said.

“Emotional and romantic manipulations were also used,” the agency added in a statement.

It said that Shin Bet agents had posed as “friends” of Puppi — whose account had more than 2,000 friends before disappearing on Monday — and received a Bitcoin payment from her.

“The Iranian operative behind the account used a business cover story to give various missions,” the Shin Bet said.

Puppi expressed a will to harm LGBT people as well as “business representatives and diplomats from Arab countries operating in Israel”, it said.

Those behind the account also tried to damage Israel’s ties with Russia by encouraging people to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war, the Shin Bet said.

The Shin Bet told AFP they could link the account to Iran with the intelligence they obtained.

Meanwhile, Israel claimed on the weekend it had “foiled” alleged bids by Iran “to assassinate a US general in Germany, a journalist in France, and an Israeli diplomat in Turkey”.

The plots “were ordered, approved, and funded by the senior leadership of the Iranian regime and were intended to be executed by the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps)”, said a statement from the prime minister’s office.

A suspect, named Mansour Rasuli, changed into detained and interrogated via Mossad retailers in Iran and allegedly confessed he had been tasked via the Islamic republic to perform the killings, it said. Rasuli was then freed.

The top-quality’s workplace refused to provide similar details and there has been no instant response from Iran.