© CopyrightSpy versus Spy • Flags • Broken Alliance
Spy Versus Spy
According to reporting summarized by TASS from The New York Times, U.S. intelligence warned American leadership that Israel had stepped up efforts to monitor senior U.S. officials involved in Iran policy, including Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby. The same report said Israel was particularly interested in President Donald Trump's strategy in negotiations with Tehran. Israel and the United States have long spied on each other, the report noted, but the concern was that Israeli efforts had crossed a line during sensitive Iran talks.
What has been going on for some time now is not ordinary alliance management. Allies spy on allies, certainly, and Washington itself has long practiced that art. But when a close military partner is reportedly treated as a critical counterintelligence concern during delicate Iran negotiations, the relationship is no longer operating inside normal diplomatic boundaries. The recent TASS report also cited NBC reporting that the Pentagon's intelligence directorate had raised the threat level from Israel to "critical." From a geopolitical standpoint, given US support for the Israeli state, this is unprecedented.
"A state that treats every diplomatic process as a battlefield eventually teaches even allies to treat it as a counterintelligence problem."Israel's precarious position is often explained almost entirely through the actions of outsiders: Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, hostile international institutions, European critics, or shifting American politics. Those pressures are real, but they are not the whole story. A growing part of Israel's vulnerability is now self-generated. Its security doctrine has become so expansive, so preemptive, and so suspicious of even allied diplomacy that it risks turning tactical superiority into strategic isolation. This is nothing new, as this Hudson Institute report by Lee Smith warned us as far back as 2011. The report recalled damning evidence the Netanyahu government was off the rails as far back as the Obama and Biden administrations.
A country can win almost every immediate confrontation and still lose the larger political environment in which those confrontations occur. That is the danger Israel now faces. Its intelligence reach, military assertiveness, and diplomatic pressure campaigns may continue producing short-term gains, but they also deepen the perception that Israel is no longer merely defending itself. It is attempting to dominate the decision space of everyone around it, including its allies.
Defining Alliance
That is what "stepping on everyone's toes" means in practical geopolicy terms. It is not simply that Israel acts forcefully. It is that its actions increasingly narrow the maneuvering room of other states. Public opinion in the United States, and in much of the rest of the world, is that Israel has no intention of being a positive force for peace in the multipolar world. This is a paradigm shift given Israel's past relative immunity from criticism, and especially from repercussions of its actions. A 2025 report from Christopher Datta via American Diplomacy frames today's critical situation well:
"There is also no military solution to the conflict between the Israelis and their neighbors, including the Palestinians. Israel will never entirely eradicate Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran as a threat any more than the US was able to eradicate the Taliban in Afghanistan. The conflict that Netanyahu has locked Israel into is a forever war."Today, with this forever war escalating day to day, Washington wants leverage over Iran. Israel wants to prevent any arrangement it views as a strategic concession. Gulf states want de-escalation without Iranian dominance. Europe wants energy stability and fewer refugee shocks. Lebanon wants to avoid becoming a permanent battlefield. Syria remains exposed to Israeli strikes. The result is that nearly every regional or external actor finds itself adjusting to Israeli security imperatives, whether or not those imperatives align with its own interests. As Datta suggests in his report, the situation is not sustainable. And the dangers for Israel and the Jewish diaspora could soon explode.
There is also a moral and historical danger here that Israel's defenders too often refuse to confront. The more Israel's leadership identifies its most extreme policies with Jewish survival itself, the more it risks exposing Jewish communities worldwide to anger over decisions they did not make and may not support. That is not only unfair to Jews outside Israel; it is strategically reckless. Antisemitic incidents remain a serious global problem, and recent reporting and monitoring groups continue to show elevated threats against Jewish communities in the West and beyond.
This distinction must be made plainly: Jewish people worldwide are not responsible for the policies of the Israeli government. Many oppose Netanyahu's direction, many have no vote in Israeli politics, and many live in societies where they are already vulnerable to old hatreds repackaged through new conflicts. A far-right Israeli leadership that fuses Jewish identity, state power, military doctrine, and ideological Zionism into one political shield may believe it is protecting Jews. In practice, it may be making ordinary Jewish communities abroad less safe. Still, there is a soft mobilization for pro-Israel political, educational, and identity infrastructure at a moment when Israel's government is under growing pressure.
This report by Brian Eglash at The Times of Israel is a whispered call to arms for support of what the Zionists are up to these days. It's as if we need to redefine what alliances mean in the 21st century. For many, the Israeli state has had no reciprocity whatsoever for its allies.
Genocide Becomes a Rationale
The charge of genocide, once dismissed by many Western governments as inflammatory rhetoric, is now part of formal international legal proceedings and mainstream human rights debate. The International Court of Justice has issued provisional measures in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, ordering Israel to take measures within its power to prevent acts covered by the Genocide Convention and to prevent and punish direct and public incitement to genocide. Even if one disputes the legal terminology, the political damage is already immense. A state founded partly as a refuge from extermination now finds itself accused, in international forums, of participating in the very moral category it was created to escape.
The U.S.-Israel relationship has survived major strains before, including the Jonathan Pollard espionage affair, which left deep scars inside the American intelligence community. Pollard, a former U.S. naval intelligence analyst, was convicted of spying for Israel and became one of the most damaging symbols of "friends spying on friends." But today's environment is more volatile. The Iran file is tied to regional war, oil flows, domestic U.S. politics, Gulf security, and the credibility of American diplomacy. If U.S. officials believe Israeli intelligence is actively trying to penetrate Washington's internal negotiating posture, then the issue is not merely espionage. It is policy captured by pressure, surveillance, and strategic disruption.
This does not mean Israel is irrational. For there is a rationalization, however warped it may be. Israel's security establishment is operating from a worldview in which nearly every external negotiation is a potential threat unless Israel can shape or preempt it. That worldview may protect Israel tactically. Strategically, it risks isolating the country even among friends. The danger for Washington is obvious. If the United States cannot conduct Iran policy without worrying that its closest regional ally is trying to monitor or manipulate the process from inside, then American sovereignty over its own Middle East policy becomes questionable.
And the danger for Israel is equally serious. A state that treats every diplomatic process as a battlefield eventually teaches even allies to treat it as a counterintelligence problem.
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