A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee has pleaded guilty to leaking secret documents about Israel’s plans to strike Iran last year during a period of escalating regional tensions linked to Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon.

In a statement on Friday, the United States Department of Justice said Asif William Rahman, 34, pleaded guilty to two counts of “willful retention and transmission of classified information” related to national defence.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 15 and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for both counts, according to a plea agreement.

“Mr. Rahman betrayed the trust of the American people by unlawfully sharing classified national defense information he swore an oath to protect,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G Olsen said in the statement.

“Today’s guilty plea demonstrates that the Justice Department will spare no effort to swiftly find and aggressively prosecute those who harm the United States by illegally disclosing our national security secrets.”

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The FBI arrested Rahman — whom the US government said was an employee of the CIA since 2016 and had a Top-Secret security clearance — in Cambodia in November.

US media outlets reported at the time that American officials accused him of leaking documents prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which analyses images and information collected by US spy satellites.

The NGA also conducts work in support of secret US military operations.

The documents, which appeared in October on a channel of the Telegram messaging app, had noted that Israel was moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to a ballistic missile attack by Iran on October 1.

Iran said those launches were carried out in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Tehran, as well as the killing of a senior Iranian military official.

Israel carried out its own attack on multiple sites in Iran in late October.

Citing court documents, the Justice Department said on Friday that Rahman had accessed and printed two documents marked “Top Secret” that contained national defence information “regarding a US foreign ally and its planned actions against a foreign adversary”.

“Rahman removed the documents, photographed them, and transmitted them to individuals he knew were not entitled to receive them,” the department said.