The Shin Bet’s decision to formally address reports from last week that Yair Netanyahu was urgently flown from Miami to Israel last December because of an Iranian plan to assassinate him has pushed this bizarre affair beyond the point where anyone should be expected to simply move on.
Unlike politically aligned television channels in Israel and the United States, and unlike even the prime minister himself, Israel’s domestic security agency cannot release fragments of information while withholding the rest and expect that to have no effect on public trust. Large parts of the Israeli public have become deeply skeptical of official messaging, even when it concerns national security. The Shin Bet’s conduct under Director David Zini so far, particularly on matters involving the Netanyahu family, has done little to ease that skepticism.
Yair Netanyahu
(Photo: Yair Sagi)
In a statement issued two days ago, the Shin Bet said there had been “a significant threat to Yair Netanyahu” and that “following an assessment, a decision was made to urgently extract him together with the security team and return him to Israel.”
The statement does not reveal just how immediate the danger was. The chairman of the advisory committee, while the matter was still under censorship, reportedly said the operation came “literally at the 90th minute.” But even without that detail, the words “significant threat” and “urgently” are enough to raise serious questions about the gap between the gravity of the Shin Bet’s description and what happened afterward.
The first question is obvious: Why has no American authority publicly addressed the affair?
Not the FBI. Not another federal agency. Nothing.
If the Israeli account is accurate, an enemy state had advanced an assassination operation on U.S. soil far enough for the Shin Bet to order an urgent evacuation. The United States has had no problem publicly exposing alleged Iranian plots to assassinate President Donald Trump, including before the latest war, as well as other Iranian terrorism and espionage operations.
So why the silence here?
If reports are correct that the Shin Bet even rushed additional personnel into action to extract Yair Netanyahu, Americans may also have reason to ask how local and federal authorities handled an alleged Iranian operation unfolding on their territory. Next week marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks, when the United States paid an enormous price for intelligence and operational failures. If an Iranian cell really managed to progress so far toward carrying out a terrorist attack on American soil, this is not a minor security incident. It demands serious investigation.
Then there is the second question, and it is even harder to explain.
Yair Netanyahu returned to Miami three weeks later and remained there for more than a month.
So what happened to the “significant threat” that had supposedly required his urgent evacuation? Were those responsible arrested, questioned or charged? Did the intelligence picture change? Was the danger eliminated?
Presumably, the Shin Bet did not conclude that after urgently removing Netanyahu from a serious threat, it was safe to send him straight back into the same danger. Something must have changed. The public deserves to know what.
These questions do not arise from dismissing the possibility of a genuine threat against a senior Israeli figure or someone close to one. Quite the opposite. Once the Shin Bet chose to confirm at least part of the reports, understanding what actually happened in Miami in December 2025 became a legitimate matter of public interest.
The agency itself releases security assessments when it considers them important. It recently briefed that it was seeing a growing willingness by Hamas to seek confrontation. Zini has also shown awareness of the Shin Bet’s responsibility for protecting the integrity of elections, a period when state institutions must exercise exceptional caution over the information they release and ensure that it is credible.
The same standard should apply here.
The Shin Bet cannot tell the public that there was a “significant threat,” that Yair Netanyahu had to be removed “urgently,” and then expect the questions to end there. Not when the alleged plot took place in the United States, not when American authorities have said nothing publicly, and certainly not when Netanyahu was back in Miami just three weeks later.
Once the Shin Bet chose to confirm the story, even partially, it also assumed the responsibility to explain what actually happened.