Raging against the supposed “deep state” in Washington has long been one of President Donald Trump’s favorite pastimes. Borrowed from Turkey, that loaded term has become a catch-phrase among the MAGA faithful for the idea that the intelligence community is subverting Trump.
Some of Trump’s loathing for the deep state is certainly well-earned. Senior IC holdovers from former President Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House made little effort to hide their loathing for the commander in chief. This culminated in the dishonest framing by former IC officials of Hunter Biden’s notorious “laptop from hell” as Russian disinformation.
Still, Trump appears to possess much more faith in another country’s deep state, namely Israel’s.
The intelligence backstory to our current Iran war alongside Israel, what the Pentagon terms Operation Epic Fury, remains opaque. That’s normal to a degree, because any detailed IC assessments of Iran’s nuclear program and combat capabilities are highly classified. It’s apparent, nevertheless, that Trump and his inner circle disregarded American intelligence in the run-up to our bombing of Iran. That war, in tandem with the Israeli military, commenced on Feb. 28.
Trump’s relationship with our intelligence agencies remains troubled. While CIA Director John Ratcliffe seems to be at the White House every day, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has all but disappeared. West Wing wags have it that DNI stands for “do not invite.” Gabbard’s cause hasn’t been helped by the recent resignation of one of her top deputies, Joe Kent, in protest over the Iran war.
Worse still is the White House’s relationship with the National Security Agency. While the hush-hush NSA avoids the limelight, it produces the lion’s share of actionable intelligence in Washington. Trump abruptly fired the NSA director, who is dual-hatted as the boss of U.S. Cyber Command, and deputy director almost a year ago, without explanation — apparently at the demand of Laura Loomer, Trump’s favorite MAGA social media gadfly. The NSA then went for almost a year without permanent leadership. Army Gen. Joshua Rudd was finally confirmed by the Senate to lead the NSA and CYBERCOM two weeks ago. Rudd, a veteran of Army special operations, possesses no experience in intelligence or cyber matters. It’s no surprise that agency morale is “in the toilet, flushed” as a top NSA official recently told me.
Which brings us back to Israel. Trump and many of his national security officials ignored warnings from our intelligence community that overthrowing Iran’s regime by dropping some bombs would not be an easy task. Having worked on the “Iran problem” for American intelligence, I can attest that IC views of Tehran long ago concluded that there was no simple fix.
Israeli intelligence, however, offered Trump a sunnier estimate of the Iran war, including more optimistic takes regarding what bombs and missiles might achieve. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a record seven trips to visit Trump so far in the president’s second term. Several of these visits included Israeli spy bosses.
We don’t know what specific intelligence was proffered during those visits, but the case of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) offers insights. Graham has become a top MAGA mouthpiece for war and an unwavering advocate for Israel’s viewpoint regarding Tehran. How Graham memorized Israeli talking points about Iran can be explained by Graham’s numerous visits to Israel. During these trips, Graham met with Israel’s political leadership, including Netanyahu, and its intelligence agencies. As the senator admitted regarding his chumminess with Israeli spies, “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me.”
In other words, Israeli spies convinced Graham of their optimistic take on war against Iran — a take that wasn’t shared by American spies. The senator then seems to have sold Trump the same. While this surely isn’t the whole story of how Trump, who ran in 2024 as the peace candidate plus an opponent of “stupid wars” in the Middle East, chose war against Iran, it’s an important component. Trump’s perennial skepticism regarding the assessments of America’s intelligence agencies seems to have evaporated when secret assertions were made by Israeli spies.
In espionage terms, Israeli spies ran a successful influence operation, persuading Graham and others to support war, who, in turn, persuaded Trump. American counterspies are aghast at all this. The rose-tinted view of Israel’s defenders — Israel is a close U.S. ally, so why worry? — is not shared by many American spies.
What’s long been understood inside U.S. counterintelligence, yet seldom gets discussed openly, is that while Israel indeed is our ally, Israel also spies aggressively on us and does so with a dedication that’s rarely surpassed. Our intelligence relationship with Israel is complicated. For instance, the NSA has a close and mutually productive signals intelligence and cyber partnership with its Israeli equivalent, the Israeli military’s Unit 8200. Yet, the CIA’s relationship in human intelligence with Mossad, its Israeli counterpart, is less cozy and more mutually suspicious. When it comes to counterespionage threats, Israel is in the top five after China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba.
To be sure, the IC enjoys close relationships with numerous foreign spy services. Our secret spy alliance with the Anglosphere, the so-called Five Eyes scheme that was born during World War II, is unique in its mutual trust. But the IC has close ties with several allied governments. such as Japan and the Netherlands. Everybody spies, but part of this secret dance is an understanding that a country won’t spy on an ally too aggressively. Even France, which operates its own aggressive spying effort against American industry and technology, generally abides by these rules. Only Israel considers itself exempt.
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The outcome of Trump’s Iran war, now in its fourth week, remains unclear. But what’s certain is that any prospect of easy victory against Tehran, as suggested by Israeli intelligence, has evaporated.
Perhaps, then, the president should put some more faith in his own IC?
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.