WASHINGTON, United States: The Pentagon has raised its counterintelligence threat level for Israel to its highest level, US media reported on Sunday.
The Pentagon´s Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) said Israel´s “ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a ´critical level´,” NBC News said, citing US officials.
The move came after concerns that Israel had been attempting to spy on top US 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.
The United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28, triggering the war.
Since then, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu´s relationship appears to be under strain.
Trump unleashed a profanity-laced tirade over the phone at Netanyahu over Israel´s threats to bomb the Lebanese capital Beirut, fearing it would undermine talks with Tehran, the Axios news outlet and ABC News reported earlier in the week.
Washington has, for years, provided billions in military aid and weapons sales to Israel, including throughout the genocide in Gaza.
The US Congress is also currently debating a section of a new defence bill, which would integrate the two countries’ research and development for weaponry to an unprecedented degree.
While the US and its allies are known to regularly conduct intelligence operations on each other, officials told both NBC and The New York Times that Israel’s recent vigour was unique.
The New York Times reported that the increased DIA designation surpasses all current allies, as well as a handful of countries with more fraught relations.
Recent incidents included Israel’s military intelligence trying to plant listening devices at the DIA headquarters in 2021, according to the newspaper.
In 2025, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, was found to have tried to plant a similar device in a Secret Service vehicle, the report said.
