Iran: Trump, Bibi, and spying
Yossi Alpher — June 15, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. US President Trump appears to have accepted a framework deal with Iran that ignores many of Israel’s (and America’s) declared war aims against that country.
A. Indeed, the parties (with Israel absent) are scheduled this Friday to sign off on a negotiating framework that is understood by Israel to comprise a ceasefire, including in Lebanon, opening of the Hormuz Straits and some form of nuclear supervision. Middle East oil will flow again. Down the line, the US will release billions in frozen Iranian funds.
Little appears to remain of US and Israeli demands to restrict Iran’s missile arsenal and sever Iranian support for proxies like Hezbollah. No one is dismantling the ayatollahs’ regime, thereby (by omission) legitimizing it.
Lebanon with its weak government and dominant pro-Iran Shiites remains caught up in the middle of all this. Not surprisingly, the US-Iran agreement, as yet unsigned and unimplemented, was born only after a last-minute flare-up in Lebanon: Hezbollah (on orders from Tehran?) attacked Israel; the IAF bombed Beirut; Iran threatened missiles on Israel; Trump made additional concessions to Iran.
If indeed the deal is signed in Switzerland on Friday as currently planned, Israel finds itself still confronting heavily armed and hostile neighbors in southern Lebanon, Gaza and of course Iran, all enjoying some form of Trump-blessed regional accommodation. With Knesset elections approaching, Netanyahu has little to show--and a lot of losses in lives and damage to international standing to explain--since the massacre of October 7, 2023.
All of this begs the question: what happened to the Israel-US alliance that kicked off this latest war with Iran? How could Netanyahu so badly misjudge Trump and America’s strategic needs in the Middle East, which have seemingly been satisfied by wily Iranian negotiators? Why is Trump now openly questioning Netanyahu’s political future? How much love is lost between these two?
These are questions that will test the coming months of US-Iranian negotiations and the totally unpredictable nature of Trump as a negotiator. Needless to say, Trump, with the flick of a finger on his phone, can completely invert and reverse the picture. Stay tuned.
Q. Be that as it may, in the midst of the countdown to the deal, with Trump rebuffing Netanyahu’s demands to stick to original negotiating goals with Iran, the administration leaked an allegation that Israel was spying on it. Is there a connection here?
A. There appear to be two and possibly three connections. First, there is really nothing new here. At tense times like these, Israel and the United States are undoubtedly trying to collect information regarding one another’s intentions toward Iran, Hezbollah and a host of related issues. Second, when it serves Washington’s interests, the Israeli intelligence collection effort can be called ‘spying’ in order to put Israel on the defensive, thereby rebuffing Israeli diplomatic pressure on Washington regarding Iran.
There is, incidentally, a third connection. It is specific to President Trump. The leader of the United States is such a non-strategic, disjointed, short-term transactional thinker that in many ways it is pointless for both friends and adversaries to try to “spy” and divine his intentions. It is a waste of time and effort. So much for spying on Trump.
Q. But we don’t hear Israel objecting loudly to these spying accusations. They just slip under the radar...
A. This is where the Iran ceasefire drama reflects the total lack of symmetry in US-Israel relations. There is a history here which is constantly and repeatedly ignored by Jerusalem and which is exploited, when the perceived need arises, by Washington.
Q. For example?
A. The most obvious case in point is the Pollard scandal of the 1980s. US Navy civilian employee Jonathan Pollard secretly volunteered to deliver highly sensitive information to Israel, which succumbed to the temptation to use Pollard despite its commitment not to spy on the US. Pollard was apprehended by the US and went to jail. Israel had a lot to answer for in its security relationship with the US.
Ostensibly, Israel has not engaged in such spying ever since. Here is one illustrative anecdote. Sometime in the early 1990s, when I was running the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, I received a package addressed to ‘Head of Center,’ mailed from the United States. There was no return address. The package contained a classified US security-establishment briefing book regarding Middle East affairs – issues that both Israel and the US were involved in.
A gift from an American friend of Israel? A crafty US intelligence test of Israel’s adherence to post-Pollard commitments? The minute I opened the package, I summoned colleagues as witnesses, called the IDF chief of intelligence on a speaker-phone, and proceeded to shred the document, unread by any of us.
Such was the impression on us of the Pollard scandal, and such our respect for the sanctity of the US-Israel intelligence relationship.
Q. Has American spying on Israel left the same impression? Followed the same rules?
A. Nothing of the sort. The US spies constantly on Israel, with no apologies. Here is the lack of symmetry in action. About 20 years ago, at lunch in Manhattan with a couple of FBI agents who I innocently thought were inviting me to lecture to the FBI about the Middle East, they tried to recruit me point blank. For starters, they wanted me to point out to them fellow Israelis engaged in nuclear issues as they arrived in the United States.
When I dutifully reported on this recruitment attempt to the appropriate Israeli intelligence officials back in Tel Aviv, I was greeted with a shrug: it happens all the time.
I can only add that the FBI effort to recruit me was as bumbling as was Israel’s handling of Pollard. But in no way was it as costly to the intelligence relationship.
Q. Bottom line?
A. The Iran deal is linked not only to Trump’s readiness to ignore Israel’s war aims and accuse it of spying. Here is another, perhaps outlandish, speculation about a link. I happen to think the Iran deal’s timing--at least the initial declaration of a deal--may also have been linked to the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament. Trump announced the ceasefire deal the day the tournament started. It goes without saying that a major international endeavor like the FIFA World Cup, centered in North America, was liable to be overshadowed and even spoiled by an ongoing war prosecuted by the US.
Trump, we recall, was the recipient in December 2025 of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. The prize appears to have been designed specifically for Trump by FIFA head Gianni Infantino, who is no less a schemer and manipulator than the US president.
Trump, we also recall, believes he deserves a Nobel peace prize. Meanwhile he has to make do with FIFA’s. “We’ve saved millions and millions of lives,” he stated with no foundation whatsoever upon receiving the FIFA award. Now it looks like he is not about to disrespect it by fighting a war during the tournament. His ego craves international approval nearly as much as it needs America’s.
How important ‘coincidences’ like this are to Trump’s mindset regarding strategic issues, we may never know. In any case events, and Trump’s ego, may quickly pass them by.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
