U.S. Report Reveals How Israeli Spying Wrecked Iran Peace Talks

WASHINGTON (KI) -- The Pentagon has elevated its counterintelligence threat assessment for Israel to “critical” — its highest designation — after discovering that Israeli operatives wiretapped senior U.S. officials, including Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s chief negotiator with Iran, and Jared Kushner, the former White House advisor. 

The espionage scandal comes as Tehran formally blamed a direct phone call from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Vice President JD Vance for sabotaging diplomatic negotiations in Islamabad.
According to a joint assessment compiled by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the “critical” designation was triggered by “aggressive” Israeli efforts to intercept communications and hack the personal devices of top American diplomats and military planners. 
The classified logs identify specific targets of the surveillance campaign: Witkoff, who was tasked with brokering a diplomatic resolution with Tehran; Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official; Michael DiMino, Colby’s principal deputy; and Kushner, the former senior advisor who remains a key confidant to the president on Middle East strategy.
The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence has “zeroed in” on Israeli attempts to monitor these officials to obtain information about internal Trump administration deliberations on whether to continue military aggression against Iran or move toward a negotiated end to the disastrous American war.
The timing of the scandal is incendiary. On April 11, 2026, Vance led the U.S. delegation in nearly 21 hours of intense negotiations with Iranian officials in Islamabad. By all accounts, the talks were on the brink of an agreement — an “Islamabad MoU,” as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later described it.
Then, according to Tehran, everything collapsed.
Araghchi publicly declared that a phone call between Netanyahu and Vance during the negotiations fundamentally altered the American position. “Netanyahu’s call to Vance during the meeting shifted the focus of U.S.-Iran negotiations to Israel’s interest,” Araghchi said. “The U.S. tried to achieve at the negotiating table what it could achieve through war.” 
Netanyahu confirmed the call. Speaking at a cabinet meeting hours after the talks fell apart, the Israeli prime minister said Vance had “called me from his plane on the way back from Islamabad” to brief him on the negotiations. 
Netanyahu explicitly described the outcome as “the collapse of the negotiations” and detailed how Vance had assured him that Washington was still insisting Iran “cede all of its stockpiles of enriched uranium and completely abandon its enrichment activities in the future”.
One senior U.S. official described Israel’s intelligence collection against top American officials as “unhinged.” The DIA’s assessment reportedly includes a seven-page document and a specific chart detailing Israel’s capabilities to conduct human espionage and technical collection at a “critical level.”
The document lists specific incidents that sharpened U.S. concern, including thwarted attempts by Israeli officers to embed listening devices and malicious malware on the personal mobile phones of American personnel.
Pentagon security officials have confirmed that U.S. travelers to Israeli occupied territories now routinely use burner phones and computers and operate under the assumption that Israeli intelligence has bugged their hotel rooms.
The paradox is staggering. Even as the U.S. and Israel prosecute joint military terrorism against Iran featuring unprecedented tactical coordination — with Israeli liaison officers working face-to-face alongside American counterparts within CENTCOM — Israel’s political leadership has been caught red-handed trying to undermine the American commander-in-chief’s pursuit of a diplomatic off-ramp.
For Washington, the episode revives a long and sordid history. In the 1980s, U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard spent 30 years in prison after selling suitcases of top-secret documents to Israel. 
Upon Pollard’s return to Israeli occupied territories in 2020, Netanyahu gave him a hero’s welcome at Tel Aviv airport. Pollard has since entered Israeli politics, aligning with hardline factions and calling for the forcible removal of Gaza’s population.
Now, U.S. intelligence officials say Netanyahu’s regime has once again crossed the line — this time, by spying directly on the president’s inner circle to derail the very peace talks the White House was leading.