"The Ofer brothers asked by the Mossad to lend their ships ... in order to get as much intelligence on what is going on in Iran"

Someone is trying to give the Israelis a break and not have them paraded as a bunch of unprincipled, stinking marauders, who'd sell their scrolls for a quick buck!

"... Subsequent reports by Israeli media and maritime newspapers suggest the Ofer Brother Group's maritime empire ships may have been secretly docking at Iranian ports for years, far beyond the September 2010 tanker sale the new State Department sanctions designation laid out.
"At least 13 Tanker Pacific ships, owned by the Israeli Ofer Brothers Group, have docked in Iran over the past decade, according to information released by Equasis, a major shipping information database," SeaNews Turkey reported this week. "The ships docked in the Iranian port city Bandar Abbas" -- on Iran's southern coast -- "and Kharg Island," a major Iran oil export port.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports today that the Ofer Group ordered its ships last year to halt docking at Iranian ports. A close read of the order, the paper's intelligence columnist Yossi Melman points out, indicates that the company was apparently previously aware that its ships were docking in Iran. "This is the first indication of such instructions from the Ofer family, serving as an indirect implication that ships in their possession have in fact docked in Iranian ports before," Melman writes.
"This thing stinks," Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the Envoy, of Ofer's alleged business with Iran. Clawson noted that Israel's current national security advisor was previously on the board of the Ofer Group. The company is headed by the Ofer brothers, including Sami Ofer, who was ranked as Israel's wealthiest businessman by Forbes magazine in 2008.
Ships run by subsidiaries of the Israeli maritime firm used prohibited measures to sneak into the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas without detection, including by turning off global positioning systems and beacon lights, Clawson said his sources have told him.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year on western intelligence agencies playing a "cat and mouse game" with the Iran shipping line, IRISL, trying to evade sanctions. "U.S. officials said IRISL regularly changes the names of its corporate units and ships to stay a step ahead of pursuers," the paper reported. "The company has even resorted to repainting its ships' smoke stacks and hulls to try and camouflage their identity, U.S. officials say."

While Haaretz has written that the Ofer Group has provided some assistance to the Israeli intelligence services in the past, Israeli officials have offered no reason to think the Ofer Brother Group's alleged September 2010 tanker sale to the Iran shipping line and the reportedly more extensive transactions with Iran now coming under scrutiny were part of such an arrangement.... Other analysts believe Ofer's relationship with the Israeli security services may be more intertwined. "If I had to bet on it, I absolutely would bet the Ofer brothers had been asked by the Mossad to lend their ships, contacts, networks in order to get as much intelligence as they can on what is going on in Iran," the Washington expert on Iran sanctions said on condition of anonymity.
An Israeli Knesset hearing on the subject came to an abrupt halt earlier this week after the Israeli lawmaker chairing the hearing was handed a note. Israeli media suggested the note may have been security related.
Clawson said there may be a silver lining in the somewhat embarrassing affair: The fact that the United States would publicly chastise a leading company of its top Middle Eastern ally for violating Iran sanctions may give the U.S. more credibility when it argues for sanctions compliance from companies in other parts of the world.(woohooo) "This was a signal, that we will go after anybody, including the powerful and politically well-connected," Clawson said. "If you're a small company in Germany [thinking of doing business in Iran] and see the Americans go after an Israeli company,  you might think, 'uh oh.'"