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Iran Is Stalking Israelis Visiting the UAE
(Ha'aretz) Yossi Melman - Visits to the Persian Gulf by tens of thousands of Israelis for vacations or business is a major headache for Israeli intelligence agencies. Most native Bahrainis are Shi'ites with religious, cultural and ethnic ties to Iran. Israeli Col. (res.) Elhanan Tennenbaum was kidnapped in Dubai in October 2000 after being lured by Hizbullah agents with Iranian intelligence backup to travel there. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians visit and live in Dubai. A good number of the businesses established by Iranians in the Gulf are fronts for Iranian intelligence. The smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Khan - the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb - which supplied blueprints of the centrifuges for enriching Iran's uranium, operated from Dubai. Another threat is that Iranian intelligence will recruit agents among Emiratis or Bahrainis who visit Israel, or Iranian agents will acquire passports of these two countries and pretend to be tourists or businesspeople visiting Israel. In the past, Israel has exposed Westerners (from Denmark, Belgium, Germany and Britain), some of them of Lebanese origin and some converts to Islam, who were sent to Israel by Hizbullah or Iran for terror missions or to gather intelligence.