Israel ‘spied on Iran nuclear talks’

WASHINGTON // Israel has spied on Iran’s nuclear talks with the United States and other major powers, a news report said on Tuesday.

Israel quickly dismissed the Wall Street Journal's report as "not true", and denied spying on the United States.

The Journal article, which quoted current and former US officials, said Israel's operation was designed to infiltrate the talks and help build a case against the emerging terms of a deal.

Besides eavesdropping, Israel obtained information from confidential US briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe.

What angered the White House more than the espionage was the fact that Israel shared inside information with US legislators in a bid to reduce congressional support for a deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear programme, the article said.

Many Republicans are opposed to such an agreement.

“It is one thing for the US and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal US secrets and play them back to US legislators to undermine US diplomacy,” a senior US official was quoted as saying.

US intelligence agencies spying on Israel discovered the operation when they intercepted communications among Israeli officials. These communications carried details that the US agencies believed could only have come from access to the confidential talks, officials said.

Israel’s outgoing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman dismissed the report.

“This report is not true. Obviously Israel has security interests to defend and we have our own intelligence. But we do not spy on the United States. There are enough participants in these negotiations, including Iranians,” he said.

“We got our intelligence from other sources, not from the United States. The instruction has been clear for decades now: you don’t spy on the United States, directly or indirectly.”

* Agence France-Presse