Iran Turned Israel’s Former Energy Minister Into a Spy

Gonen Segev’s contacts were part of what made him useful. A former Israeli energy minister, he still knew people connected to security and foreign affairs. According to Shin Bet, he tried to put some of them in touch with Iranian intelligence officers disguised as harmless business contacts.

In February 2019, the Jerusalem District Court sentenced Segev to 11 years in prison. He had admitted serious espionage offenses and giving information to an enemy under a plea agreement. The more serious accusation of assisting an enemy during wartime was dropped.

Segev had been energy minister in 1995–96. By the time the spying case emerged, his political career had already given way to a drug-smuggling conviction and a move abroad. Associated Press reported that his earlier offense involved 32,000 Ecstasy tablets and an expired diplomatic passport. He left prison in 2007.

The intelligence relationship began in Nigeria, where he was living. Shin Bet’s June 2018 account dated his contact with officials at the Iranian embassy there to 2012. The service said he later traveled to Iran twice to meet handlers whose intelligence roles he understood.

Other meetings took place in hotels and apartments around the world. Shin Bet said the Iranians supplied an encrypted communications system, and that Segev passed information about Israel’s energy sector, security locations and officials. These are the agency’s descriptions of the operation; much of the subsequent charge sheet remained redacted.

The attempted introductions gave the case a dimension beyond the secrets of one former officeholder. According to Shin Bet, his assignments involved drawing on his continuing Israeli relationships while concealing the Iranian identity of the people he wanted them to meet.

Segev’s own account was different. Through his lawyers, he initially claimed that he intended to operate as a double agent and return to Israel as a hero, the Times of Israel reported. The case ended with his confession to the reduced offenses and the court’s prison sentence.

He was brought back to Israel after Equatorial Guinea refused him entry during a May 2018 visit because of his criminal record, Shin Bet said. His career had carried him from medicine to the cabinet, prison and Africa. Its espionage chapter closed in a Jerusalem courtroom, with the former minister admitting that information had gone to Iran.