The Trump administration’s Department of War is expressing concern that Israel is spying on the U.S. — including on its negotiations to end the Iran war, according to multiple reports.
The Pentagon is ramping up in its responses to alleged Israeli espionage, including recently raising the country’s counterintelligence threat level to “critical,” NBC News reported Friday, citing three anonymous current and former U.S. officials. U.S. intelligence reports also indicate Israel had made efforts to listen in on conversations involving senior U.S. officials such as Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, one of the lead negotiators in the peace talks with Iran, The New York Times reported Saturday afternoon.
The White House has vehemently denied both of the reports. The Pentagon, meanwhile, declined to comment to both NBC News and The New York Times.
“This entire story is false and sourced to someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of what’s going on,” a White House official said in a statement to NBC News.
“Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone US government officials,” a spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in D.C. told the outlet, adding that the allegations are “completely false.”
Two anonymous senior U.S. military officials vaguely told The New York Times that American personnel make it a point to protect their phones and other electronics when traveling to Israel.
Neither the White House nor the Department of War immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s (DCNF) requests for comment.
“Israel targeting senior U.S. officials cannot be accepted by our government,” former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent wrote on X in reaction to both outlets’ reports.
Israel targeting senior U.S. officials cannot be accepted by our government.
This is not standard practice, especially considering the fact that Israel survives on our defense funding & diplomatic top cover.
Until we actually take away the support we give Israel they will… https://t.co/xaXW9ruK5x pic.twitter.com/h6yNeR3rjR
— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) June 6, 2026
“This is not standard practice, especially considering the fact that Israel survives on our defense funding & diplomatic top cover,” added Kent, who resigned his post over opposition to the conflict with Iran. “Until we actually take away the support we give Israel they will keep playing us as fools.”
Kent maintains Israel pressured the U.S. into the ongoing conflict despite his view Iran did not pose an “imminent” threat, as the administration cited as a justification for the war.
Israeli officials convinced the Trump administration to wage war on Iran after pitching an attack plan — which multiple cabinet members immediately panned — at a top-secret White House meeting, The New York Times reported in early April. U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint attacks on the Middle Eastern country on Feb. 28, 17 days after the alleged meeting.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe denounced the plan as “farcical,” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio — widely considered a staunch supporter of Israel — called it “bullshit.”
The New York Times’s Saturday report alleges Israel and the U.S. have both long spied on each other, and have known about and put up with such actions.
Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou, however, disputed the notion that Israel and the U.S.’s spying on each other was two-sided during an interview with podcaster Theo Von which aired Friday.
“The Israelis spy on the United States. They’ve always spied on the United States,” he told Von on “This Past Weekend.”
“Do we spy on them also?” the host asked in turn.
“No,” Kiriakou forcefully said. “And that’s written in stone at the CIA. We do not spy on Israel, but they openly spy on us. They’re all over the country stealing defense secrets.”
The whistleblower added that, while the U.S. spies on “almost every” other country, it cannot spy on Israel due to a “political decision” made by the White House and Congress.
WATCH:
During an appearance on Valuetainment in July 2025, Kiriakou claimed to host Patrick Bet-David that Israel was banned from the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va. after they made attempts to bug the building.
“We don’t allow the Israelis into CIA headquarters because they would always come with gifts and the gifts had always listening devices packed inside them,” the whistleblower claimed to Bet-David. “And, you know, somebody brings you a gift, you X-ray it. It’s the normal process.”
“And we’re like, ‘You guys can’t keep coming back here every single time trying to bug our conference rooms,’” he emphasized.
Bet-David asked Kiriakou what percentage of the Israelis’ gifts had bugs in them, to which he responded, “100%.”
“They [the Israelis] were serious. They were hoping one would slip through,” he said.
During an April interview with Tucker Carlson, Kiriakou claimed the U.S.’s increasing alignment with Israel’s foreign policy priorities has gradually hurt its relationships with traditional allies such as the U.K. and Canada.
“Now, we disagree on basic fundamentals of foreign policy,” he said. “We have in some cases an actively hostile relationship … mostly with the Canadians, sometimes with the Brits to the point where it’s impacting the relationship now.”
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