Bat Yam Mayor Tzvika Brot and his team on Monday waylaid and pursued an Iranian diplomat through Manhattan while reading him a NIS 250 million ($70m.) lawsuit over damages caused to the municipality by Iranian missiles, the Bat Yam municipality said.
The municipality reported that the ambush, dubbed “Operation Open Account,” was two months in the making, with multiple people traveling to New York to locate an official Iranian representative to serve him with the lawsuit.
“They sent us missiles, and we sent them a bill,” Brot told Walla.
Israelis could not enter the Iranian diplomatic compound, so the Bat Yam team prepared identification sketches of senior Iranian representatives at the United Nations and selected a meeting point, according to the statement.
“The team assembled for the mission did not rely on a chance encounter with an Iranian diplomat,” the municipality noted.
According to people who organized the ambush, surveillance personnel spotted an Iranian representative leaving the Iranian compound heading for the UN headquarters and alerted Brot and his team.
The lawsuit against Iran was filed last Sunday with the Jerusalem District Court, with the operation to serve the papers taking place on the following day.
The Iranian representative reportedly ignored Brot and his associates and attempted to walk away, prompting the team to chase him through the streets of Manhattan until Brot had finished reading him the contents of the lawsuit, thereby advancing legal proceedings.
Holding Iran accountable for deadly strikes
“The campaign against Iran does not end on the battlefield. It also extends to the courts, bank accounts, assets, and every financial resource of the Iranian regime. We will continue fighting on behalf of terror victims until we bring the ayatollahs’ regime to its knees financially,” Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder of Shurat HaDin – Israeli Law Center, said in the statement.
Nine residents were killed, and 178 were wounded in Bat Yam in June 2025 due to an Iranian missile barrage on central Israel. Approximately 160 buildings were damaged, with 22 requiring immediate demolition, leaving thousands of residents homeless, the municipality recalled.
Brot allegedly decided “that very night to demand that Iran pay for the damage.”
The Bat Yam municipality said Iran has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit; however, if no defense is submitted, the municipality will be entitled to request a default judgment.
If Bat Yam wins the lawsuit, it is still unclear how the municipality will collect the hundreds of millions of shekels in restitution from Iran, an enemy state.