Pentagon raises Israeli spy threat to ‘critical’ level as Iran war strains alliance

The Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency has elevated its counter-intelligence threat assessment for Israeli espionage to “critical” — the highest level — according to multiple US media reports. Citing defence officials, NBC News said the DIA had concluded that Israel’s capacity for “human espionage and technical collection” now poses a critical threat. The move follows mounting concern that Israeli intelligence has sought to eavesdrop on senior figures in the Trump administration, including the president’s lead negotiator Steve Witkoff, under-secretary of defence Elbridge Colby, and his deputy Michael DiMino. A seven-page internal assessment, first disclosed by NBC, details efforts to penetrate Washington’s decision-making on the widening Middle East conflict, particularly the US-led war against Iran.\n\nViewed from Washington, the leak has exposed deep fissures within the national security establishment. American sources cited by the Jerusalem Post dismiss the alert not as a response to proven Israeli spying but as a calculated move by anti-war factions inside the Pentagon. These “America First” holdouts, long opposed to Operation Epic Fury — the US military campaign in Iran — are said to be angered by Israel’s role in persuading President Donald Trump to prosecute the war. By pushing the counter-espionage narrative, they seek to weaken the alliance and undermine the rationale for deeper military entanglement. The Pentagon has neither confirmed nor denied the alert, while the White House and the Israeli embassy have flatly rejected the allegations. The murky origins of the leak underscore how the Iran war is generating proxy bureaucratic battles in Washington.\n\nFrom European and Middle Eastern vantage points, the episode is seen as a symptom of an unusually strained partnership. In Paris and Rome, coverage has framed the alert as part of a wider breakdown in trust between Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose relations have frayed over military strategy in Lebanon and the diplomatic space Washington is willing to grant Tehran. Analysts in the Arab world point to a long, if often tacit, history of Israeli intelligence operations on US soil — most notoriously the Jonathan Pollard affair in the 1980s. Yet for a serving Pentagon agency to publicly tag a close ally as a critical counter-intelligence risk is unprecedented, and it risks complicating the already fragile coordination on everything from targeting Iranian nuclear sites to managing the fallout from the conflict.\n\nLooking ahead, the alert is unlikely to sever the deep institutional and military ties between the US and Israel. However, it will almost certainly lead to more compartmentalised intelligence sharing and could embolden Congressional sceptics of the war. The leak also serves as a warning that the political sustainability of the Iran campaign is far from assured, even within the president’s own defence establishment. Whether the classified assessment behind the critical rating is ultimately substantiated or emerges as a by-product of internal Pentagon warfare, it has introduced a new element of friction into an alliance that can ill afford it at a time of escalating regional conflict.