In South America, Cohen (or Thabet, as his Syrian associates would have known him) posed as a wealthy businessman. The remarkable part, of course, is that it really happened.

The series depicts Eli Cohen’s transformation from office clerk to Mossad operative to Syrian political power-player in a daring tale of espionage that plays more like something out of a James Bond thriller than a history book. Sacha Baron Cohen, best known for comedic roles in Borat (2006) and the Emmy-nominated Showtime series he created, Who is America?, is cast against type as the legendary secret agent.

6 from creator Gideon Raff, whose movie The Red Sea Diving Resort premiered on the streaming service in July. And among its agents, there are few, if any, that have achieved the status of Eli Cohen, who in the mid-1960s posed as a wealthy Arab businessman for years in order to infiltrate the highest levels of the Syrian regime and send invaluable intelligence back to his Israeli handlers.Ĭohen’s story is recounted in The Spy, a six-episode Netflix miniseries premiering Sept. Around the world, there are few spy agencies that inspire the level of intrigue that Israel’s Mossad does.

Spy vs spy agent red