An alleged leak of top-secret US intelligence revealed Israel’s preparation for an attack against Iran. The leaked documents revealed that Israel is still moving military assets to carry out a military strike as retaliation for Iran’s missile attacks on October 1st.
Experts consider this leak to be one of the most serious security breaches at the heart of the US intelligence service in years. This leak has effectively exposed that the United States spies on one of its closest allies, Israel, and has potentially hindered Israel’s retaliation attack against Iran for its missile barrage earlier in October.
It should also be noted that this leak did not come from official US channels. Instead, a Telegram channel named “Middle East Spectator” claimed it had received sensitive documents from a source within US intelligence days before the leak was made official.
The FBI has opened an investigation to address this intelligence leak
An FBI spokesperson said on Tuesday, October 22nd that “the FBI is investigating the alleged leak of classified documents and working closely with our partners in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. As this is an ongoing investigation, we have no further comment.”
This is an extremely serious situation, as it has been reported that the aforementioned Telegram channel routinely publishes pro-Iranian content, and the X account that is linked with the channel says it is located in Iran.
The documents that were leaked allegedly included a visual intelligence report made by the Department of Defense’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency distributed within US intelligence circles last week.
President Joe Biden is “deeply concerned” about the leaking of intelligence regarding Israel’s plan for Iran
Several major US-based media outlets have reported that the Biden administration has already contacted Israeli officials over the intelligence leak and the ongoing FBI investigation.
Reports say the Biden administration made it clear to Israeli officials that it considers the leak extremely serious and will take steps to ensure a breach of intelligence will never happen again.
However, the Biden administration has also said it is not certain whether the intelligence leak currently under investigation by the FBI was leaked or hacked. John Kirby, the official national security spokesman of the Biden administration, said, “Officials don’t have any indication at this point of additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain.”
The investigation on this matter is expected to take a while, given that the FBI will have to look for either digital or physical clues that would explain how the information was leaked in the first place.
This US intelligence leak might force Israel to change its retaliation plan against Iran, as Israeli authorities have made it quite clear that Iran’s attack will not be left unanswered.
