They sure do, but looking at recent events, you can make an educated guess on which country has more influence over the other. Part of it can be attributed to spying and knowing dark? secrets.
Trump publicly prohibited various Israeli operations (at end of 2025 op and 2026 Iran war), publicly badmouthed Nethanyahu repeatedly (via Barak Ravid), and had various diplomatic initiatives Nethanyahu didn't like. It's pretty obvious who has more influence here.
As much as they don’t, that’s why it’s spying. But given the budget for spying agencies the guess is they might be doing something and it wouldn’t be intelligent not to spy on Israel, something I don’t believe to be true even for this administration.
It's hilarious listening to CIA insiders talk about spying.
John Kiriakou [1] will spend 3 hours talking about the CIA's torture program (illegal) and NSA spying on Americans (illegal). In the same conversation, he will insist that the US would never spy on Israel because it is illegal.
Who is this fooling ?
[1] Senior ex-CIA official, whistleblower & internet meme phenomenon.
Since the 1951 Angleton-Harel Secret Pact, there has been an unwritten agreement that CIA and Mossad will not spy on each others countries. Kiriakou (who is a wonk) confirmed as much in recent remarks.
That speaks to my comment (which was not sufficiently specified I guess) but it does not speak to “the USA spies on Israel” which is what I was replying to
Okay, but I don't think Kiriakou would explicitly admit if the US spied specifically on Israel.
I think at most we get a indirect "confession" like Andrew Bustamante gave in some podcasts like here, where he answers to the question if the US spies on the Mossad that everybody spies on everybody and than distract to the case were the US was caught spying on (it's ally) Germany:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZklvHVsaT4
PS: I guess at the end you didn't spy until you were caught spying.
By all reports, the USA only has agreements not to spy on Five Eyes (plus secretly, Israel). Germany is not in that group. Ally has nothing to do with it.
And it sounds like you are setting up an untestable claim. Can’t help you there. Believe what you want.
He has CIA experience but his word shouldn't just be taken at face value. The man has unsettling views on buying pardons and excuses some other things away as well. Kiriakou shouldn't be trusted, IMO.
That said, he probably isn't wrong at all about this particular thing.
I think he said in that interview that the CIA does not spy on Israel. It does not apply the other way around. Based on policy decisions, this seems very believable to me.