Israel reportedly spied on Iran talks, leaked details to Congress

Israeli intelligence was eavesdropping on closed-door nuclear negotiations between Iran and the U.S. and other world powers, then passing the classified information along to the U.S. Congress to try and pre-emptively scuttle the deal, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing "interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. and Israeli diplomats, intelligence officials, policymakers, and lawmakers."

The White House, which learned of the espionage early on in the talks, was more upset about Israel using selected bits of purloined information to try and undermine the sensitive nuclear negotiations than the actual spying, explains the Journal's Adam Entous:

A senior official in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office denied that Israel spied directly on the U.S., but "U.S. officials said Israel has long topped the list of countries that aggressively spy on the U.S., along with China, Russia, and France," Entous reports. "The U.S. expends more counterintelligence resources fending off Israeli spy operations than any other close ally, U.S. officials said." Read the entire fascinating look at the Israel-U.S. spying game at The Wall Street Journal.

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