Ran was the counter-intelligence service of the Jewish settlement in Mandate

Mandate Palestine

Mandate Palestine existed while the British Mandate for Palestine, which formally began in September 1923 and terminated in May 1948, was in effect...

 Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

. It was established by Shaul Avigur

Shaul Avigur

Shaul Avigur was a founder of the Israeli Intelligence Community.-Biography:Avigur was born in Dvinsk under the name Saul Meyeroff , but when his son Gur Meyeroff was killed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, he changed it to Avigur, meaning "Father of Gur"...

 (Meirov) and Yehuda Arazi (Tannenbaum), the latter a member of the Palestine Police Force

Palestine Police Force

The Palestine Police Force was a British colonial police service established in the British Mandate for Palestine on 1 July 1920, when High Commissioner Herbert Samuel's civil administration took over responsibility for security from General Allenby's Occupied Enemy Territory Administration...

. Arazi joined the police on orders from the Haganah, and rose to become a police inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department

Criminal Investigation Department

The Crime Investigation Department is the branch of all Territorial police forces within the British Police and many other Commonwealth police forces, to which plain clothes detectives belong. It is thus distinct from the Uniformed Branch and the Special Branch.The Metropolitan Police Service CID,...

(CID).

Ran's primary aim was to thwart the intelligence gathering operations of the British, Germans, Italians and Americans.