© Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images"What? We would never spy on our American friends."
The Pentagon is increasingly concerned about Israeli intelligence's efforts to spy on top US officials and has raised the counterintelligence threat level for its closest foreign ally to the highest level, NBC News reported on 5 June.
Citing current and former officials, the US outlet revealed that the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) recently issued a new counterintelligence threat assessment amid differences between Washington and Tel Aviv over how to proceed with the war of aggression against Iran.
The DIA reportedly posted an internal message raising the espionage threat level regarding Israel to "critical." It also identified a series of specific incidents that heightened US concerns, one of the officials said.
The Pentagon is particularly concerned that Israel is surveilling top US officials to obtain information about internal deliberations among President Donald Trump's close advisors regarding decision-making on the conflicts in West Asia.
A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, denied the report, calling it "completely false."
A White House official also denied the report, saying it was "sourced to someone who doesn't have any knowledge of what's going on."
Since the start of a brittle ceasefire in early April, Trump has been holding negotiations with Iran to end the war he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched on 28 February.
According to some reports, Netanyahu played a crucial role in convincing Trump to go to war alongside Israel.
In response to the negotiations, voices in the Israeli media and among Israeli politicians have claimed that any deal to end the war now would constitute a defeat for Israel.
Netanyahu has pushed to resume bombing raids against Iran and reportedly defied Trump by continuing to bomb Lebanon despite the ceasefire, according to western officials.
Israel is interested in determining whether Trump will decide to resume major combat operations against Iran or to end the conflict, the current and former US officials said.
Despite the DIA warning, high-level intelligence-sharing with Israel has reportedly not been affected.
Israel is known for its aggressive espionage, even against the US, which provides it with billions in military aid each year.
When traveling to Israel, US officials often use burner phones and computers and assume Israeli intelligence has bugged their hotel rooms to listen in on sensitive conversations, the officials revealed.
In the 1980s, US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested for spying on Israel. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for handing over suitcases of top-secret documents to Israeli intelligence.
Upon his return to Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave him a hero's welcome at Tel Aviv airport.
The War Department's decision to raise the threat level over Israel's "aggressive" spying comes as lawmakers in Washington are quietly moving to integrate the US and Israeli militaries in unprecedented ways.
Comment: The parasite is digging in ever deeper
A clause in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released last week proposes bilateral defense initiatives that "would all but fuse the two countries' armed forces together," according to an analysis of the document by Responsible Statecraft (RS).
Several lawmakers introduced legislation earlier this week looking to block the proposed integration outlined in the NDAA, which determines the spending amounts and budget priorities for the US' sprawling military for the next year.
The lawmakers argued that Section 224 provided a way to entrench US aid to Israel without proper oversight.
However, pro-Israel members of Congress summarily struck down the amendment to strip Section 224 from the 2027 NDAA.
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