Israeli national Ami Gaydarov, 22, has been charged with participating in an Iran-backed bomb plot to murder a high-ranking Israeli official – most likely former prime minister Naftali Bennett.
Gaydarov was arrested in March, but the Israeli judiciary did not give the media permission to report on the case until Thursday. His arrest was the result of a joint investigation by Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence service and the Lahav 433 national crimes unit, which is sometimes known as “Israel’s FBI.”
Investigators said Gaydarov, a resident of Haifa, actively sought out Iranian operatives on the Telegram messaging platform to offer his services for money in August 2025, and was paid about $23,000 for his services, mostly using cryptocurrency and PayPal.
Gaydarov was eventually asked to begin procuring dual-use chemicals and setting up a bomb laboratory. He rented an apartment in downtown Haifa for that purpose, manufactured between eight and ten kilograms of explosive material, and performed a successful test detonation, which he recorded on his smartphone. The video of the explosion is among the evidence introduced against Gaydarov.
Investigators said Gaydarov also collected intelligence for his Iranian handlers, including sensitive information about Iranian missile impacts in Haifa during the recent war, details of Israel’s emergency response procedures, and photographs of strategic facilities at the port of Haifa. He was also allegedly trying to pinpoint the location of a U.S. Navy destroyer that was heading for the Haifa port.
“He was carrying out operations for the Iranians up until the night before his arrest,” said lead investigator Maor Goren.
“It is important to understand that the main suspect produced a very large quantity of sensitive explosive material, where any error in handling it could have caused a huge explosion that would have harmed neighbors,” Goren said.
Goren said the information about missile impacts that Gaydarov passed along to his Iranian handler was useful to Tehran, which had limited ability to assess the damage from its attacks.
“They do not know where the missile impacts are, and he was passing along reports he gathered from the media or photographed himself. He was filming interceptions and sending them to the handler, which could clearly help the Iranians analyze the situation,” he said.
Gaydarov allegedly brought four of his friends into the scheme, using them to obtain the materials he needed, and asking one of them to store his explosives when he realized he was under police surveillance. Police said all of the co-conspirators confessed to their actions and expressed remorse when shown the evidence against them.
Tragically, one of his co-conspirators was described as a survivor of the Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, who may have been suffering extended psychological trauma from the day of the atrocities.
Israeli security officials described the Gaydarov case as a “serious escalation” of Iran’s espionage activities. Shin Bet and Lahav 433 have brought at least 40 indictments over the past two years against Israeli citizens accused of working for Tehran, but most of them have engaged in surveillance or cyber activities rather than plots to commit violence.
In February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an order to revoke the citizenship of Israelis convicted of terrorism offenses, invoking a law that passed with a majority vote in the Israeli legislature in 2023.
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