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← Intelligence vs. Public Case

Israeli Intelligence Fed to the President

America's own intelligence agencies did not say Iran was an imminent threat (see Gabbard's assessments and no first strike). So where did the urgency come from? This page follows a second stream of intelligence that reached the President in both wars: briefings from the Israeli military and the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, carried to him by American officials, and in at least one account without telling him where they came from.

June 2025: "Mossad's stenographer"​

On June 21, 2025, the day before the U.S. strikes, The Grayzone (reporters Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil) published an account from an official in the Trump administration:

"An official in the administration of President Donald Trump has told The Grayzone that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla have become vehicles for Israel's Mossad and military as they seek to manipulate the US into attacking Iran. The official referred to Ratcliffe as 'Mossad's stenographer.'

According to the official, Ratcliffe and Kurilla have pressured Trump to join Israel's war more directly by regurgitating overblown briefings they received from the Israeli military and Mossad director David Barnea – but without informing the president that the intelligence was derived from a foreign third party.

During the Trump administration's meetings with Israeli intelligence officials including Barnea, the official said the Israelis have demonstrated a single-minded focus on regime change, clamoring for authorization to assassinate Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Israeli officials have emphasized that the moment to take out Khamenei is now.

The issue of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity is of secondary concern in the Israelis' presentations, which the official characterized as tactless, hyper-aggressive exercises in fear-mongering. At one point, the Trump official recalled, an Israeli intelligence briefer declared that Iran could transfer a nuclear weapon to Yemen's Houthi militia in less than a week."

(as pasted by @SMO_VZ on X, June 21, 2025; The Grayzone). Kit Klarenberg summarized: "Mossad is using CIA Director John Ratcliffe and CENTCOM chief Michael Kurilla to manipulate Trump with crooked intelligence on Iran's nuclear program to push for war" (Klarenberg on X, June 21, 2025). The same official said envoy Steve Witkoff was "pushing the president to preserve the diplomatic track," and that officials who questioned the war, Gabbard and Joe Kent, were kept out of meetings. This rests on one unnamed official; Ratcliffe and Kurilla are not recorded responding. The same week, per a post citing CBS News, "sources told CBS News that the CIA director is effectively lobbying Trump on behalf of Israel by parroting Netanyahu's claims about Iran being 'very close' to a nuclear bomb - claims the IAEA and the broader US intelligence community have up to now rejected" (Angelo Giuliano on X, June 21, 2025). AIPAC's CEO had earlier described Ratcliffe as one of AIPAC's "lifelines" in the administration (see the lifelines).

Israel's case, and the American doubts​

Israel's own intelligence case was the basis for its war. The Economist called it, in June 2025, "the spy dossier that led Israel to war." A Wall Street Journal report by Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman, and Dustin Volz was headlined: "Israel built its case for war with Iran on new intelligence. The US didn't buy it." (source list, Linnaeus, June 21, 2025). In other words, American analysts were not persuaded, and America went to war anyway.

February 2026: the Situation Room and "critical intelligence"​

Before the second war, Israeli intelligence again went straight to the top. On February 11, 2026, Netanyahu gave an hour-long presentation in the White House Situation Room; CIA Director Ratcliffe called its regime-change forecast "farcical" the next day (see the Situation Room pitch). On February 23, according to Axios, "Netanyahu gave Trump critical intelligence," and "the CIA spent the following days verifying it"; the President gave the final strike order on the afternoon of February 27 (Matthew J. Reynolds on X, September 21, 2026). The pro-war magazine Commentary conceded in its April 2026 issue: "there is the tiniest kernel of truth to the populist podcast slander. Israeli intelligence—in both a tactical and strategic sense—did help persuade Trump to launch the second Iran war when he did." (Commentary, April 2026).

Joe Kent, then the NCTC director, described how it worked: the Israelis cultivated cabinet members like Rubio and Ratcliffe, giving "members of the Israeli government and Israeli donors the ability to go point to point directly to them and say, 'Hey, here's our agenda. Here's some intelligence we haven't put through the regular channel' in order to get their stated objective of a regime change war in Iran across the finish line" (Going Underground on X, September 26, 2026).

Israel's private assessments contradicted its public calls​

The Washington Post reported during the war that "Senior Israeli officials have told U.S. diplomats that Iranian protesters will 'get slaughtered' if they try to take to the streets against the Iranian regime." The report added: "The Israeli assessment goes against their public messaging, in which they continue to call for a popular uprising against the Iranian regime." (Rerum Novarum on X, March 19, 2026). Netanyahu's February pitch had promised the regime was "ripe for collapse." Privately, his officials said the opposite.

The same service that was spying on America​

The Israeli intelligence services feeding the President these briefings were, according to a Pentagon counterintelligence report later in 2026, simultaneously eavesdropping on the American officials negotiating to end the war (see the critical threat rating). A foreign service that shapes what the President hears while spying on the people who advise him is not a partner. It is running an operation.

Status: John Ratcliffe, Michael Kurilla, David Barnea, Steve Witkoff, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, Kit Klarenberg, Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Kent, and Donald Trump are alive. The Grayzone account rests on one unnamed official; this page does not state that any living person committed a crime.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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