US Phones Found Spyware; Pentagon Hits Critical Over Netanyahu

Right, so Netanyahu just lost something money and lobbying cannot buy back, and he did not lose it to Iran or to Hezbollah. He lost it to America's own Pentagon. The US military's intelligence arm has reportedly moved Israel from high to critical on its counterintelligence threat list, which means America's closest regional ally is now being treated like a hostile spy service by the very people who have spent decades treating it as untouchable. And it happened in the worst possible week for him so break out the tiny violins. This did not start with a dusty classification chart that only three people and a defence contractor pretending not to lobby for a living could love. It started with phones. American phones, used by US personnel inside Israel, with communications-tapping software reportedly installed on them in secret. Israel denies spying on American officials, because of course they do, though of course an allegation is not a conviction and a report is not a trial. But the damage does not wait for a courtroom, because the timing is brutal. At the exact moment the Pentagon is reportedly warning its own people to watch Israel, Congress is looking at a defence-bill provision that would pull Israel deeper into US military technology, weapons production and data cooperation. Netanyahu does not need to be caught holding the screwdriver for this to land on his desk. He runs the Israeli government, he has been driving the war pressure on Iran, and the machinery being suspected belongs to the state he leads. So America's favourite client state has ended up in the American security warning column at the same moment Washington is debating whether to wire it deeper into the American war machine, and that hands Trump a problem he cannot solve by pretending it is just another awkward phone call with a man he keeps letting take the wheel.And that word critical is doing a lot of work here and with good reason. The Defence Intelligence Agency is the Pentagon's military intelligence body, the part of the US state built to assess threats, collect military intelligence and warn the armed forces when the security picture turns dangerous. Counterintelligence is the business of protecting your own side from other people's spies, eavesdroppers, informants and technical collection. So the Pentagon is reportedly warning its own people that Israeli intelligence activity around the US military has become a top-tier problem. Not a social-media spat, not a cable-news mood swing, but the military bureaucracy of the United States, the same bureaucracy that has treated Israel as a privileged partner for decades, now telling its own people to take extra care around Israeli agencies. Israel can deny it, the White House can wave it away, and the embassy in Washington can call the reporting false, but the internal warning still sits exactly where it sits and you can’t exactly dismiss the Pentagon as a bunch of cranks can you?