Israel’s Supreme Court has confirmed that 66-year-old ultra-Orthodox Israeli Eli Cohen will be extradited to the United States. Cohen was convicted by an American court of engaging in the forbidden sale of military equipment to Iran. According to the indictment, on two occasions in 2012 and 2013, Cohen sold spare parts for fighter jets, knowing that their final destination was Iran. He was accused of violating the ban on selling weapons to Iran, selling military spare parts without a license and conspiring to launder money, though he denied knowing that the equipment was intended to go to Iran.
Cohen’s story is incredible. He grew up in the central Israeli city of Netanya, was raised in the religious Zionist movement, served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces' Combat Engineering Corps and was wounded in the War of Attrition. He was later part of the team that developed the Merkava tank. In 1989, he founded a company that acquired and refurbished used military equipment for export overseas, with the permission of Israel’s Ministry of Defense.
Since then, Cohen has gotten into trouble more than once over the sale of military equipment to Iran. Remarkably, he always managed to elude any significant punishment. In 1992, Portuguese intelligence discovered that Cohen had met in that country with three Iranians to sell them arms. Cohen defended himself at the time by claiming that he was acting on behalf of the State of Israel. He was arrested in the United States in 1993 and charged with the illegal exportation of military equipment to Iran, but the case was resolved with a plea deal and Cohen was sentenced to half a year of house arrest. When tried for the same activity in Israel in 1997, he was acquitted of the charge of selling military equipment to Iran and only convicted of export violations. He received a light fine but served no jail time.
Cohen found himself in trouble again in 2000, when he was accused in Israel of selling armored personnel carriers and their engines to Iran. The indictment was eventually withdrawn when the prosecutor failed to prove the charges. In 2002, Cohen was investigated on suspicion of selling rubber brake pads for armored personnel carriers, but no indictment was filed against him. In 2004, he was investigated again in another incident involving military equipment and Iran, but once again, no indictment was filed.
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