Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed this week that Iran had targeted one of his sons for assassination, telling Channel 14 in a phone interview that Iran tried to kill, to murder one of my sons. He did not name which son or give further detail at the time.
A report by Newsmax, citing a US law enforcement source, filled in the gap the next day. It named the target as Yair Netanyahu, 35, who had been living in the Miami area, and said Iranian agents were on the ground there conducting surveillance on him. The plot was reportedly uncovered by Israeli intelligence in December 2025.
Yair Netanyahu was instructed to leave Florida immediately and did so without packing his belongings, returning to Israel, where he has remained since. He had spent several years living in Miami, a lifestyle that drew criticism at home over its cost to the state through his security detail, and particular criticism for staying abroad after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023.
The prime minister's phone call and the report that followed it arrived in that order, confirmation first and detail after, which is itself part of the story. An Iranian plot against a sitting prime minister's son is a serious enough claim that it did not stay confined to security channels for long, and the family it involves is one already under scrutiny for how and where it has spent the years since the war began.