“Enhanced” through the Telegram age
When Israel’s enemies stop sending spies across borders and begin recruiting them in Tel Aviv living rooms, one man is tasked with holding the line.
Erez Harel, a decorated former commando turned Deputy Chief of Counterespionage at Shabak, is no stranger to shadows. His division doesn’t chase terrorists abroad—it hunts traitors at home. In the wake of the Israel–Iran conflict, Iran adapts. Instead of soldiers, it sends Telegram chats disguised as NGOs, Instagram messages wrapped in charity, and AI-synthesized voices of dead loved ones. Their goal: transform ordinary Israelis into unwitting assets.
From safehouses in Jaffa to dead drops in Tzfat, from synagogue charity boxes to encrypted “wellness” retreats, Harel and his team confront a new breed of espionage: psychological infiltration at industrial scale. What begins as petty courier tasks escalates into a sprawling Iranian initiative—BABEL—designed not to steal secrets but to corrode Israel’s very identity, planting false memories, alternate histories, and synthetic faith.
Haunted by a failed operation from his past and racing against an enemy that uses algorithms as much as agents, Harel must outthink both foreign masterminds and domestic traitors. Each move uncovers a deeper conspiracy: Iran is not just recruiting spies—it is building a second Israel inside the real one.
Taut, chilling, and disturbingly plausible, The Rise and Fall of Iranian Spies in Israel blends cutting-edge espionage tradecraft with intimate human drama, asking: what happens when the war for a nation is fought not on borders, but inside its citizens’ minds?
The Rise and Fall of Iranian Spies in Israel is a pulse-pounding espionage thriller by bestselling author Haggai Carmon that captures the disturbing realism of modern digital warfare—and now echoes a chilling reality reported by The New York Times on August 17, 2025. The article reveals how dozens of ordinary Israeli citizens—ranging from teenagers to elderly adults—were lured online, recruited by Iranian agents for acts of sabotage and even assassination, including acid attacks, arson, bomb attempts, and plotting against a university professor Democratic Underground.
This real-world portrayal mirrors the book’s spine‑tingling premise: Iran’s shift from traditional espionage to a high-efficiency, mass-crowdsourcing campaign targeting everyday Israelis via Telegram and other digital platforms. In Carmon’s story, Deputy Chief of Counterespionage Erez Harel races to dismantle Iran’s “BABEL” campaign, in which social media messages, AI-generated voices, and innocuous errands conceal a weaponized strategy to erode Israel’s identity from within.
Just as in the novel, the NYT case shows how recruitment begins innocently—spray-painting slogans equating the prime minister to Hitler—before rapidly escalating into incendiary sabotage and attempted murder JCSFADemocratic Underground. That David-vs-Goliath tension, embodied in Harel’s mission, echoes the reality: Israel is not just fighting a foreign power—it’s battling a war fought on its citizens’ doorsteps, with algorithms and temptation replacing covert drop-offs and dead-letter boxes.
Positioned at the intersection of thrilling narrative and geopolitical urgency, The Rise and Fall of Iranian Spies in Israel is timely and deeply resonant—especially given that this shadow campaign is already underway in real life. For readers drawn to the human impact of modern espionage, cybersecurity, and national identity, this is John le Carré for the Telegram age.