If more evidence was needed to show that the relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama has morphed from tragedy to farce, it came late Monday with the revelation that Israel had spied on the nuclear talks between the United States and Iran.
Talk about spy vs. The National Security Agency, eavesdropping on Israeli officials as usual, according to the revelations of Edward Snowden , overheard them discussing intelligence their own spies had gathered by spying on U. It is another thing for Israel to steal secrets and play them back to U.
Officials in Jerusalem issued emphatic denials, as they did last year when Newsweek reported on Israeli espionage against the U. Of course, Israel does spy on the U. In the age of cyberwar, electronic spying runs on autopilot, with state-of-the-art Pac-Mans zooming around the Internet gobbling up anything with the right keyword.
Anybody with an antenna or a keyboard spies on whoever is seen as the remotest threat, including friends. And how did the Israelis intercept conversations between officials in Tehran and Washington?
Last year, U. The standing order has always been to just suck it up. Until this week. Netanyahu had crossed some sort of red line again when, according to the Journal, his man in Washington began quietly sharing Israeli intelligence about the U. But what seems to have pushed Obama officials over the edge was that Ambassador Ron Dermer, a former Republican operative who holds dual U.
