标签： Asia

A major new intelligence assessment from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), a component of the Pentagon, has upgraded Israel’s counterintelligence threat rating to the agency’s highest classification, “critical”. The development has pulled back the curtain on deep, previously hidden frictions in a bilateral relationship long framed as an unshakeable cornerstone of U.S. Middle East strategy, with senior American officials decrying widespread, aggressive spying targeting top Trump administration policymakers. The reclassification, first reported by NBC News and The New York Times this past Saturday, comes as sharp public and private rifts have opened between the second Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over the future of the conflict with Iran, escalating tensions between the two supposed closest allies.

Multiple current and former U.S. officials confirmed to NBC News that the DIA distributed an internal notification marking the upgrade, which pushes Israel’s threat ranking higher than that of any other U.S. ally and even outpaces that of several established U.S. adversaries. The designation is rooted in growing alarm within the Pentagon that Israeli intelligence operatives are actively conducting widespread surveillance of senior U.S. officials to steal classified details about internal Trump administration deliberations on military strategy across the entire Middle East. The full assessment includes a 7-page analytical document plus a classified threat chart, one senior administration official told NBC, with the material explicitly noting that Israel’s capabilities for both human espionage and technical signal collection have now reached the unprecedented critical threshold, and cataloging specific recent operations that triggered heightened U.S. concern.

According to reporting from The New York Times, U.S. counterintelligence agencies have specifically tracked Israeli eavesdropping efforts targeting a slate of top U.S. national security officials. These targets include Steve Witkoff, Trump’s lead envoy for Middle East diplomacy, Elbridge A. Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official, and Michael P. DiMino IV, one of Colby’s closest senior deputies. Colby has previously publicly called for a fundamental reset of the U.S.-Israel relationship, a position that has put him at odds with Netanyahu’s government. One senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to NBC News, described the scale and intensity of Israeli intelligence gathering against senior American officials during the second Trump administration as “unhinged”. Current and former officials both emphasized to the outlet that this recent wave of activity goes far beyond the low-level, routine espionage that commonly occurs even between close allied nations.

The timing of the DIA’s assessment adds a layer of geopolitical friction, as Israel currently pushes Congress to approve sweeping new legislation that would deepen military integration between the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors. The proposed provision would bind the two countries closer together in weapons research, development, manufacturing, and cutting-edge defense technology sharing — a change that analysts widely expect would deliver substantial strategic and economic benefits to Israel. The elevated threat rating is now expected to complicate ongoing efforts to expand joint war planning cooperation between U.S. Central Command and the Israeli military, as U.S. officials may move to restrict the flow of sensitive information to Israeli officers amid the new security concerns.

The dispute emerges against the backdrop of a major public split over Middle East war policy. Since a ceasefire between Iran and the U.S.-Israel coalition took effect in early April, the Trump administration has pursued diplomatic negotiations to end the open conflict that launched on February 28. But Netanyahu’s government has openly and aggressively pushed for the U.S. to abandon diplomacy and resume large-scale military attacks on Iran. Netanyahu has also publicly clashed with Trump over Israeli military operations in Lebanon, with Trump pushing the Israeli prime minister to scale back strikes in the country.

This revelation also revives longstanding, unresolved concerns about Israeli espionage on U.S. soil that date back decades. The most famous case dates to the 1980s, when U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested and ultimately served 30 years in federal prison after being convicted of selling thousands of pages of top-secret classified documents to Israeli handlers. For many U.S. counterintelligence officials, the new critical threat rating confirms that these long-running risks have only escalated in recent years, even as the official bilateral relationship has been framed as closer than ever.

The original reporting was published by Middle East Eye, an outlet that produces independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa, and global affairs connected to the region.

As diplomatic attention shifts to Northeast Asia ahead of a high-profile Chinese visit to Pyongyang, a top senior North Korean official has publicly rejected longstanding U.S. calls for North Korean denuclearization, calling the goal an outdated, impossible dream while reaffirming Pyongyang’s plan to steadily grow its nuclear weapons arsenal in response to what it frames as American-led aggression.

Kim Yo Jong, the influential younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a key policy advisor within the Pyongyang government, issued the blunt statement on Sunday — just 24 hours before Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in North Korea for his first summit with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang in seven years.

In her official remarks, carried by North Korean state media, Kim Yo Jong pushed back against U.S. claims that Washington’s characterization of North Korea’s nuclear status holds any global weight. “The U.S. assertion to backbite the status of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state has no legally binding force and no one will be bound by the U.S. unilateral rhetoric,” she said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

She also outright refuted a U.S. announcement that former U.S. President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping had reconfirmed their shared commitment to North Korean denuclearization during a Beijing summit held last month, labeling the claim completely fabricated false information. “Some officials in the United States have failed to wake from their escapist and anachronistic dream,” Kim Yo Jong added.

Pyongyang’s accelerating push to expand its nuclear capabilities dates back to 2019, when high-stakes denuclearization negotiations between Kim Jong Un and former U.S. President Donald Trump collapsed without a breakthrough agreement. Regional security analysts widely agree that Kim Jong Un’s core strategic goal is to secure formal international recognition of North Korea as a legitimate nuclear-armed state, a status that would allow him to negotiate for the full lifting of crippling international economic sanctions that have been in place for decades.

Just last week, Kim Jong Un reaffirmed this aggressive expansion trajectory during an inspection of a new North Korean nuclear materials production facility, where he stated that Pyongyang would boost its nuclear force “at an exponential rate.” On Sunday, state media released additional updates: Kim Jong Un had visited a key weapons manufacturing facility one day prior, ordering that the country’s missile production capacity be increased 2.5-fold over the course of the country’s current five-year development plan.

Kim Yo Jong framed Pyongyang’s military buildup as a purely defensive response to joint military posturing from the United States and South Korea. She emphasized that her brother’s push for “steadily beefing up the nuclear war deterrent for self-defense” is “an irreversible final conclusion to be carried out unconditionally,” pointing to what she called “ceaseless arms build-ups” from Washington and Seoul that threaten North Korean security.

Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit carries major regional geopolitical significance. Analysts note that the trip is largely aimed at reaffirming China’s traditional influence over Pyongyang, as North Korea has increasingly shifted its foreign policy alignment toward Russia in recent years. Observers expect Xi will avoid directly pressing Kim on the denuclearization issue during their talks, and instead will focus on offering new economic assistance packages to strengthen bilateral ties.

In recent months, Pyongyang has provided conventional weapons and thousands of troops to Russia to support its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to assessments from South Korean and U.S. officials. In exchange, those officials say, North Korea has received critical economic and military assistance from Moscow to shore up its own struggling economy and defense programs.

A deepening political firestorm has engulfed the UK Labour Party after former Health Secretary Wes Streeting publicly accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of dismissing detailed evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, triggering accusations of deception, hypocrisy, and opportunism from across the political and activist spectrum.

In a revealing interview with the News Agents podcast, Streeting, who stepped down from his cabinet post last month, claimed that when he circulated a dossier of testimony collected from British doctors who had worked in Gaza to fellow cabinet members, Starmer immediately questioned his motives, suggesting the move was a deliberate attempt to leak the document for political gain. Streeting pushed back against this characterization, noting that he never released the dossier to the public until this week, when private messages related to the document were made public, undermining Downing Street’s claims that he intended to leak it.

Streeting explained his decision to circulate the dossier by saying he left meetings with visiting British doctors deeply distressed by their accounts, which included serious, credible allegations of widespread war crimes in Gaza. He argued that the United Kingdom holds both a moral and a legal obligation to respond to these allegations, rather than ignoring them. The existence of the dossier first came to light this week, when private messages from Peter Mandelson, the disgraced veteran New Labour figure and former UK ambassador to the US, were published. In the messages, Mandelson, who has long been a mentor to Streeting, dismissed Streeting’s calls for sanctions against Israel over alleged war crimes as “wild” and “hysterical”, further deriding the former health secretary’s initiative as “pathetic” and claiming he was suffering from an early midlife crisis. Cabinet minister Pat McFadden, another centre-right Labour figure aligned with Starmer and Mandelson, confirmed in the messages that Streeting had circulated the dossier and accompanying video footage to the full cabinet ahead of a scheduled meeting.

Since Streeting’s public claims emerged, multiple parties have questioned both the accuracy of his account and his underlying motives, including British Palestinian medical professionals, Labour Party insiders, and Palestine solidarity campaigners. Most notably, Ghassan Abu Sittah, a prominent British Palestinian surgeon who has worked extensively treating casualties in Gaza, has directly refuted Streeting’s claim that he met with British doctors who collected the dossier’s evidence. Abu Sittah stated that neither he nor any British doctor he knows who has served in Gaza has ever met with Streeting, calling the former minister’s claims outright lies. He also condemned Streeting as a core part of the same political apparatus led by Starmer that has enabled what he describes as genocide in Gaza, pointing out that the party has suppressed public outrage and censored dissenting voices over the last two and a half years of the conflict.

Abu Sittah further accused Streeting of pressuring the UK General Medical Council to launch what he called a “McCarthyite witch hunt” against doctors who have publicly spoken out against Israeli actions in Gaza. Streeting, while still serving as Health Secretary, supported new regulatory rules that make it easier for medical watchdogs to suspend or strike off doctors accused of antisemitism or racism over their pro-Palestine advocacy. Abu Sittah himself was reported to the GMC by pro-Israel group UK Lawyers for Israel, though independent tribunals have twice ruled that no disciplinary action is warranted.

Critics also point to longstanding rumors that Streeting is positioning himself for a future leadership challenge to likely successor Andy Burnham, should Burnham win the upcoming Makerfield by-election and mount a challenge to Starmer. Streeting also faced tight re-election in his own Ilford North constituency in 2024, where British Palestinian independent candidate Leanne Mohamad came within just 528 votes of unseating him, driven largely by public anger over Streeting’s pro-Israel stances. Records also show Streeting has received significant campaign donations from prominent pro-Israel figures.

Streeting acknowledged in his interview that Starmer’s controversial LBC interview, in which the prime minister claimed Israel had a right to cut off water and electricity to civilian communities in Gaza, nearly cost him his seat in the 2024 general election. Despite his criticism of Starmer’s slow, insufficient response to the Gaza crisis, Streeting has stopped short of describing Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide, a position that has drawn further criticism from activists. The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 73,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, with nearly the entire enclave’s infrastructure destroyed. Streeting told the podcast he rejects the use of the term genocide as an ideological litmus test for concern about Palestinian lives, claiming he has met with survivors of both the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli offensive, and that he values the lives of all Israelis and Palestinians equally. He also described Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization in the UK, as “evil and vindictive”.

Activist groups have rejected Streeting’s framing, arguing that his belated public criticism is too little, too late, and that his past actions as a cabinet member in Starmer’s government make his current claims disingenuous. Palestine Solidarity Campaign deputy director Peter Leary argued that Streeting should not need a leadership race to find his voice on Israeli atrocities, and that if he is serious about atoning for his role in enabling Israel’s actions, he should back immediate, comprehensive sanctions including a full arms embargo on Israel — a step Streeting has so far refused to take. Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, added that Streeting was a sitting cabinet minister while the humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in Gaza, and that holding private discussions with Starmer is not enough to absolve him; he should either have forced a policy change or resigned immediately in protest. Dearden also noted that Andy Burnham, the likely front-runner to succeed Starmer, has similarly refused to take a clear stance, saying only that he does not know whether genocide is occurring in Gaza.

One former senior Labour official, who has a long record of criticizing Starmer’s leadership, summed up the widespread anger at Streeting, calling him a “lying toad”. As of publication, Middle East Eye has reached out to Streeting’s office for a response to the allegations, but has not received a reply.