JERUSALEM — Three top Israeli ministers on Tuesday denied a report that their intelligence services had spied on the closed-door negotiations over
“There is no such thing as Israel spying on the Americans,” the defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said at a pre-Passover toast, according to a transcript provided by his office. Mr. Yaalon said he had checked and found no complaint from the United States to Israeli intelligence services about such spying. “There is a strict prohibition on that,” he said.
Yuval Steinitz, the minister for strategic affairs, who is in Europe lobbying officials about the Iran talks, said on Israeli television that “these claims are baseless and we reject them outright.” Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, called the report in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday “incorrect and inaccurate,” but hinted that Israel may have gleaned information about the talks from spying on the Iranian side.
“Clearly, the State of Israel has various security interests, and clearly we have good intelligence services,” Mr. Lieberman said on Army Radio. “We do not spy on the United States. There are enough elements involved, such as Iranian elements, first and foremost.”
Israel and the United States have been in an open war over the emerging nuclear deal at least since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke against it earlier this month in Congress, against White House wishes. Israel is not a party to the talks between six world powers and Tehran. For months, there has been a tussle over how much Israel was to be told about the details, and how it might use the information to build its case against the deal.
The Journal report said that senior White House officials had learned – through American spying on Israel – that Israel had acquired information from confidential United States briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe and shared it with American lawmakers in hopes of persuading them to block the deal. The fact of the espionage, an American official said on Tuesday, was less upsetting than how it was used.
Mr. Netanyahu and his team were incensed to discover, through their intelligence networks, that Secretary of State John Kerry held secret talks last fall with his Iranian counterpart at a luxurious Oman hotel. Since then, Israeli officials have, in turns, complained that their country’s closest ally, the United States, was not providing full briefings on the status of the negotiations, and said that they were nonetheless up to date on the negotiations.
After the early rounds of talks, American negotiators often flew directly to Tel Aviv to brief Israeli officials on their progress. But earlier this year, Washington decided to cut Israel off from certain details, and an American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said, “We knew we could not keep the cutoff secret, and we knew Israel would react.”
The Obama administration has been extremely tight-lipped about the negotiations, seeking to keep a lid even on details that most experts do not see as particularly sensitive. But with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, the European Union and Iran each having large teams of negotiators, much information has been revealed through basic briefings to journalists and nuclear experts, never mind covert avenues.
Read more: Israel Denies Spying on Iran Nuclear Talks
Iran ’s nuclear program , as tensions continued to mount between Washington and Jerusalem.“There is no such thing as Israel spying on the Americans,” the defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said at a pre-Passover toast, according to a transcript provided by his office. Mr. Yaalon said he had checked and found no complaint from the United States to Israeli intelligence services about such spying. “There is a strict prohibition on that,” he said.
Yuval Steinitz, the minister for strategic affairs, who is in Europe lobbying officials about the Iran talks, said on Israeli television that “these claims are baseless and we reject them outright.” Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, called the report in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday “incorrect and inaccurate,” but hinted that Israel may have gleaned information about the talks from spying on the Iranian side.
“Clearly, the State of Israel has various security interests, and clearly we have good intelligence services,” Mr. Lieberman said on Army Radio. “We do not spy on the United States. There are enough elements involved, such as Iranian elements, first and foremost.”
Israel and the United States have been in an open war over the emerging nuclear deal at least since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke against it earlier this month in Congress, against White House wishes. Israel is not a party to the talks between six world powers and Tehran. For months, there has been a tussle over how much Israel was to be told about the details, and how it might use the information to build its case against the deal.
The Journal report said that senior White House officials had learned – through American spying on Israel – that Israel had acquired information from confidential United States briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe and shared it with American lawmakers in hopes of persuading them to block the deal. The fact of the espionage, an American official said on Tuesday, was less upsetting than how it was used.
Mr. Netanyahu and his team were incensed to discover, through their intelligence networks, that Secretary of State John Kerry held secret talks last fall with his Iranian counterpart at a luxurious Oman hotel. Since then, Israeli officials have, in turns, complained that their country’s closest ally, the United States, was not providing full briefings on the status of the negotiations, and said that they were nonetheless up to date on the negotiations.
After the early rounds of talks, American negotiators often flew directly to Tel Aviv to brief Israeli officials on their progress. But earlier this year, Washington decided to cut Israel off from certain details, and an American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said, “We knew we could not keep the cutoff secret, and we knew Israel would react.”
The Obama administration has been extremely tight-lipped about the negotiations, seeking to keep a lid even on details that most experts do not see as particularly sensitive. But with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, the European Union and Iran each having large teams of negotiators, much information has been revealed through basic briefings to journalists and nuclear experts, never mind covert avenues.
Read more: Israel Denies Spying on Iran Nuclear Talks