Israel intercepted communications involving U.S. negotiators who were carrying out consultations with Iran. In response, the Pentagon upped its counterintelligence threat level from Israel to critical, informed sources say. This incident points to growing rifts between Washington and Tel Aviv against the backdrop of Israel\u2019s escalating military operations in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
As reported by the media, citing several current and former U.S. officials, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and other military intelligence units recently wrapped up an assessment, as a result of which the counterintelligence threat level from Israel was raised from high to critical. Although the U.S. and Israel have long been aware of each other\u2019s intelligence-gathering operations and had largely let them slide, the current administration has concluded that Israel\u2019s attempts to get at Washington\u2019s strategic thinking during negotiations with Iran crossed a line.<\/p>\n
According to the DIA\u2019s report, Israel has stepped up its surveillance of senior U.S. officials, including Steve Witkoff \u2013 the White House\u2019s special envoy for the Middle East, who is leading talks with Iran \u2013 and Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon\u2019s undersecretary of defense for policy. The document was drawn up shortly after the discovery of spyware that had been covertly planted on the mobile phones of U.S. service members stationed in Israel.<\/p>\n
By some accounts, the current U.S. administration believes that Israel poses a more serious counterintelligence threat than any other U.S. ally \u2013 and in some respects an even greater one than certain adversaries. This raises the question: might the Pentagon scale back how much intelligence it shares with Israel? One senior official said that since Donald Trump\u2019s second presidential term got under way, Israel\u2019s intelligence-gathering efforts targeting top U.S. officials have reached \u2013 in his words \u2013 an \u201cunbridled\u201d level. The Pentagon declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel intercepted communications involving U.S. negotiators who were carrying out consultations with Iran. In response, the Pentagon upped its counterintelligence threat level from Israel to critical, informed sources say. This incident points to growing rifts between Washington and Tel Aviv against the backdrop of Israel\u2019s escalating military operations in Lebanon. As reported by the media, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4561,4563,4562,1627,2207,1631,2099,107,4560,827,169,168,4556,4559,4558,60,481,4557],"class_list":["post-3439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-facts","tag-colby","tag-counterintelligence-threat","tag-intercepted-negotiations","tag-iran-2","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-trump","tag-usa","tag-whitcoff","tag-blizhnij-vostok","tag-izrail","tag-iran","tag-kolbi","tag-kontrrazvedyvatelnaja-ugroza","tag-perehvat-peregovorov","tag-ssha","tag-tramp","tag-uitkoff"],"yoast_head":"\n