Pentagon raises Israel’s spy threat to highest level: US media

WASHINGTON

The Pentagon has raised its counterintelligence threat level for Israel to its highest level over espionage activities on the negotiation with Iran, U.S. media reported on June 6.

The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said Israel’s “ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a ‘critical level’,” NBC News said, citing U.S. officials.

The move came after concerns that Israel had been attempting to spy on top U.S. officials to get information on “the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East,” the American network said.

The New York Times cited reports of Israeli efforts to eavesdrop on senior officials, including President Donald Trump’s top negotiator, Steve Witkoff, and the Pentagon’s top policy official, Elbridge Colby.

Spyware was also discovered on the phones of U.S. defense personnel stationed in Israel, the reports said.

According to sources, Israel and the U.S. have long kept tabs on each other’s activities, with both sides generally tolerating such practices to a certain extent.

However, some U.S. officials viewed Israel’s increasingly aggressive attempts to obtain Washington’s negotiating positions during talks with Iran as “crossing a line.”

The report stated that counterintelligence incidents began to increase in late 2024, when the administration of former President Joe Biden was pressuring Israel to scale back its military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

One senior official said that the level of aggressiveness displayed by Israel in collecting intelligence on high-ranking U.S. officials during U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term had become “out of control.”

Officials also noted that U.S. military personnel have implemented a range of security measures and protocols to protect mobile phones and other electronic devices from Israeli espionage efforts.