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The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) raised its counterintelligence threat assessment for Israel to "critical," the highest possible level, in recent weeks.
The assessment is driven by concerns that Israel has sharply escalated efforts to surveil senior U.S. officials and gain access to the Trump administration's internal deliberations on Middle East conflicts, two current U.S. officials and one former official told NBC News.
The designation comes as tensions between U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have flared publicly. This is over the Iran war and operations in Lebanon.
Both sides are aware that their strategic objectives may be diverging. Israel is closely watching whether Trump will resume major combat operations against Iran or pursue a negotiated settlement.
Israeli officials have told Reuters that the conversation was among the most heated phone calls the prime minister had with Trump.
The DIA posted an internal message, viewed by one of the current officials, raising Israel's counterintelligence threat designation to "critical."
"The assessment includes a seven-page document featuring a chart," the official said, and identifies a series of specific incidents that heightened U.S. concerns.
The document assesses Israel's ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection as being at a "critical level," according to the official.
Officials said the designation stemmed from concerns that Israel was making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to gather information on administration decision-making regarding the conflicts in the Middle East.
The officials said they did not know if a specific incident triggered the DIA's decision to raise the threat level.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington flatly rejected the report.
"It is completely false that Israel spies on the U.S. Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone U.S. government officials," an embassy spokesperson said.
"Israel's intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated," the spokesperson added.
A White House official said in a statement: "This entire story is false and sourced to someone who doesn't have any knowledge of what's going on."
Current and former U.S. officials said the most practical near-term consequence of the elevated assessment was likely increased caution during travel to Israel or meetings with Israeli officials, including the use of burner phones and computers and heightened care when speaking in hotel rooms, practices already in place for sensitive trips.
"The U.S. already takes extra precautions when visiting Israel," one current official said, adding, "They're well-known to aggressively collect."
Officials said the elevated threat designation did not appear to be affecting the high-level daily intelligence sharing between the two countries, particularly regarding the war in Iran.
Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described Israel as having a "hyper-aggressive intelligence service."
"They are exceedingly interested in what we are up to," Harding said.
Current and former diplomats and national security officials said Israel had long carried a reputation for aggressive intelligence collection even against its closest ally.
In the 1980s, U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard spent 30 years in prison after being found to have sold suitcases of top-secret documents to Israel.
Two additional former U.S. officials told NBC News that concerns about Israeli espionage at this moment, when the two governments are not in full agreement on the Iran war, carry the risk of undermining trust between the two countries.
Officials noted there was no impact on daily intelligence cooperation but said the DIA's move reflected a threshold being crossed in the volume or nature of Israeli collection activity.
The heightened assessment comes as Trump acknowledged calling Netanyahu "crazy" during a recent phone call and as senior U.S. officials have told NBC News that Trump wants to end the war while Netanyahu appears to want to resume it.
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