FBI nabs man suspected of leaking intel on Israel’s attacks on Iran

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A U.S. government employee has been arrested and charged for leaking secret files related to Israel’s preparations to retaliate for Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attacks, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

The suspect, identified as Asif William Rahman, was indicted last week on two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defence information. FBI agents arrested Rahman in Cambodia on Tuesday.

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Rahman, who according to The New York Times “worked abroad” for the CIA, is set to make his first court appearance in Guam later this week.

Court documents said Rahman held a top-secret security clearance with access to sensitive compartmentalized information, which the Times noted is typical for CIA employees who handle classified documents.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed on Oct. 22 that the agency was investigating the leak. “The FBI is investigating the alleged leak of classified documents and working closely with our partners in the Department of Defense and intelligence community,” it said.

The FBI is leading the probe, U.S. officials briefed on the matter told CNN. Investigators were said to have been working to authenticate the files and determine who could have had access to them, they said.

This is “one indication that, for now, the FBI and other investigators are working off the theory that the breach most likely came from a government insider and not from a cyber intrusion,” CNN reported.

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At least one of the files appears to have been scanned from an officially printed briefing book, and the pool of people who printed these pages would be relatively small, sources familiar with U.S. intelligence said.

Then-Republican candidate for the White House Donald Trump on Oct. 22 slammed the Biden administration for the leak, calling it a “bad thing.”

“They leaked all the information about the way that Israel’s going to fight and how they are going to fight and where they are going to go. And somebody — who did that? Can you imagine somebody doing that? That’s the enemy. I guess that maybe is the enemy from within, as I talked about,” Trump said during the campaign event in Doral, Fla.

“We have an enemy from within,” the Republican continued. “They hate to talk about it. Can you imagine? So we just can’t stand for this incompetence anymore.”

U.S. President Joe Biden is “deeply concerned” over the intelligence leak, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters a day earlier.

“That is not supposed to happen, and it’s unacceptable when it does,” he said, adding that the president “will be actively monitoring the progress of the investigative effort to figure out how this happened.”

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Kirby said that it is not yet known how the documents were leaked and that the Department of Defense continues to investigate the incident.

“We don’t have any indication at this point that there’s an expectation that there’ll be additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain,” he added in response to a question from reporters.

Axios noted on Oct. 19 that the leak may have been an attempt to “disrupt” Jerusalem’s plans to retaliate against Tehran and revealed close spying by the U.S. on the Jewish state, including with satellites.

On Oct. 1, Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at the Jewish state, in the second-ever direct attack by Tehran against Israel. The Israel Defense Forces, with help from the U.S. and Jordanian militaries, downed most of the missiles, with the sole casualty of the attack being a Palestinian man from Gaza who was struck by falling missile debris near Jericho.

In response, on Oct. 26, Israeli jets hit 20 sites in Iran in multiple waves, reportedly knocking out its air defences and significantly setting back its missile production industry. The Israeli strikes also destroyed radar systems required to guide the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missiles.

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Initially, Tehran downplayed the Israeli attack, though Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly told his associates later that the scope of Jerusalem’s retaliatory strikes was “too large to ignore.”

Unidentified Iranian sources told Sky News Arabia on Wednesday that Tehran’s leadership decided to “postpone” a renewed attack on Israel after the Nov. 5 election victory by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Tehran on Wednesday that communication channels with Washington “still exist.

“We have differences with the Americans, which are sometimes very fundamental and central and may not be resolved, but we must manage them to reduce their costs and decrease the tensions,” Araghchi said.

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