Despite the depth of the security, political and military alliance, and the close strategic relations between the United States and Israel, the history of the relationship between the two allies has not been immune to intelligence tensions, as the file of Israeli spying on Washington has remained one of the most sensitive and controversial issues between the two allies.
Over the decades, American accusations against Tel Aviv of exceeding the limits of security cooperation and seeking to collect secret information from within the institutions of the American administration have been repeated. Whenever new accusations emerged related to Israeli intelligence activities within the United States, old questions came back to the fore about the limits of trust between the two allies, and whether Israeli security interests were pushing Tel Aviv to cross red lines even with its closest partners.
This matter raises a question that goes beyond the boundaries of the American-Israeli relationship. If Israel is accused of spying on its greatest ally and most prominent supporter globally, how will its intelligence dealings with other countries that do not have the same status in its strategic calculations?
This controversy was recently renewed after American reports that the US Department of War raised the level of warning against Israeli espionage activities inside the United States to the maximum level, amid fears of attempts to collect information related to the US administration’s recent deliberations regarding the war with Iran and developments in the Middle East.
These fears come at a time when reports indicate that relations between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are witnessing disagreements regarding the future of the confrontation with Iran and Israeli military operations in Lebanon. These accusations are not new, but rather represent a new episode in a long history of suspicions and intelligence clashes between Washington and Tel Aviv.
The New York Times, citing American officials and intelligence reports, reported an unprecedented rise in fears within Washington about Israeli intelligence activity, amid accusations that Tel Aviv is intensifying eavesdropping operations on senior American officials involved in national security files and negotiations with Iran.
According to the newspaper, American intelligence services monitored increasing Israeli attempts to collect information about US President Donald Trump’s strategy and his changing positions towards the ongoing talks with Tehran, including targeting prominent figures in the US administration, including the Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and the Policy Officer in the Ministry of Defense, Elbridge Colby.
The newspaper quoted American officials as saying that the level of concern about Israeli intelligence activity has become higher than that of any other allied country, and in some aspects it even exceeds the fears associated with countries classified as hostile to the United States.
In a remarkable development, a report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency stated that individuals from the Pentagon working inside Israel discovered spyware that was secretly planted in their mobile phones with the aim of monitoring their communications. The New York Times also quoted a senior American official who described Israeli intelligence collection methods as “unprecedentedly uncontrolled and uncontrolled.”
The newspaper pointed out that the reliance of some Trump administration officials on their private planes and the use of their personal phones to manage files related to national security has made them more vulnerable to surveillance and eavesdropping operations by Israeli intelligence services, which raises growing concerns within the US administration about reconsidering the mechanisms for exchanging security information between the two countries, including imposing additional restrictions on the volume and quality of information that the Pentagon shares with Israeli officers in the future.
American officials and intelligence experts believe that Israeli intelligence activity against the United States dates back to before the “establishment of the State of Israel” itself in 1948, when Zionist networks worked to collect money, information, and resources from within American territory in support of the Zionist project.
During the following decades, these activities developed with the expansion of military and technological relations between the two countries, but the most prominent turning point came in the 1980s with the case of Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence analyst in the US Navy who was arrested in 1985 after leaking thousands of secret documents to Israel.
The case became one of the largest espionage scandals in the history of American-Israeli relations, after the investigation revealed that Pollard had transferred a huge amount of highly classified information, which prompted the American judiciary to sentence him to life imprisonment in 1987.
However, Pollard was released in 2015 after spending 30 years in prison, before his parole restrictions expired in 2020, after which he moved to Israel, where he has resided ever since. Although Israel later apologized and admitted that Pollard was working for it, the case marked a turning point in the American security services’ view of Israeli intelligence activity, and prompted them to tighten monitoring and follow-up procedures for any potential espionage attempts within the United States.
In the wake of the Pollard crisis, Israel announced that it had stopped espionage operations inside the United States, and pledged not to repeat what happened, but former and current American officials repeatedly confirmed that doubts had not been dissipated.
In contrast to the Cold War period, in which espionage operations focused on military and strategic information, American reports say that the main goal of Israeli activities in recent decades has become obtaining industrial secrets and advanced technology.
Newsweek magazine sparked widespread controversy when it quoted officials and counter-espionage experts that Israel “crosses red lines” more than any other US ally in the field of information gathering. Reports at the time indicated that American security services expressed concerns about exploiting trade delegations and joint defense cooperation programs to obtain advanced American technologies or sensitive information related to military industries.
Some American officials also linked these concerns to discussions at the time about exempting Israelis from entry visas to the United States, as security circles warned that facilitating movement might make it more difficult to monitor potential intelligence activity.
Other reports revealed disagreements within international coordination centers related to the war in Gaza, after American parties accused Israeli forces of monitoring and recording meetings that included officials from several countries working in the humanitarian and security field.
Despite repeated Israeli denials of these accusations, doubts are still present within American security circles, which view with caution the advanced Israeli intelligence capabilities and an extensive record of facts regarding Israeli espionage activities inside the United States.
Despite all this, the espionage issues did not lead to the collapse of security cooperation between the two countries. Rather, intelligence and military coordination remained at its highest levels, especially in files related to Iran and armed organizations and factions in the region. However, controversy is growing about the limits of trust between the two parties despite the continued close security and military cooperation.
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