A secret note passed in parliament to halt a televised oversight committee meeting has stoked a scandal in Israel over a major shipping firm accused by Washington of doing illicit business with Iran.
Ofer Brothers Group, owned by Israel's richest family, denied wrongdoing after its surprise inclusion on a US State Department blacklist last week, but its refusal to address a slew of media speculation about past links with Israel's security services only deepened the mystery.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seeing influential compatriots charged with undermining the sanctions against Tehran that he has championed, gave a muted response, saying that his government had approved no deals with the Iranians.
Lawmakers met on Tuesday to discuss legal aspects of the case in an economic oversight panel. But the meeting, aired live on television, was adjourned abruptly within minutes after the chairman, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, received a note from an aide.
The freshman legislator, a member of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, went stone-faced and did not reveal its contents. "Let's just be clear the note is not from a political figure and not from a business figure," Shama-Hacohen said, leaving open the possibility of an appeal by the defence establishment.
"It turns out that reality is much more complex, much more complicated and touchy than the average imagination can handle."
Such obliqueness excited an Israeli media long attuned to signs of a shadow war against Iran and its nuclear programme.
The sea is a key arena. According to authorised accounts and espionage exposes, Israeli commercial ships sometimes provide transport or camouflage for intelligence missions, extending the reach of the small, coastal Jewish state in a hostile region.
"The Ofer Brothers are in a bind because they are a multinational company that can ill afford publicity about them having done 'odd jobs' for the country," said Amnon Abramovitch, commentator for Israel's top-rated Channel Two television news.