According to a report by the Washington Post, last week’s rescue of four Israeli hostages by the IDF was heavily supported by a significant joint intelligence effort between the US and Israel.
The Post cited both current and former US and Israeli intelligence officials who confirmed that since October 7, the US has ramped up its intelligence gathering on Hamas and has been sharing an “extraordinary” amount of intelligence with Israel.
Although Israeli officials expressed their appreciation for the US assistance, they also maintained that the US had not provided any information that Israel couldn’t have obtained on its own. Some US officials conveyed frustration over occasional “flawed assumptions” that the US might be withholding information.
In May, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan assured reporters that the intelligence provided by the US is “not tied or conditioned on anything else. It is not limited. We are not holding anything back. We are providing every asset, every tool, every capability.”
However, there are concerns among US officials that intelligence intended solely for rescuing hostages and targeting top Hamas officials is also being used for airstrikes and other military actions, which the US has prohibited.
Regarding the recent hostage rescue, the Washington Post noted that the US intelligence “appears to have been secondary to what Israel collected on its own ahead of the operation.”
Additionally, FBI agents are in Israel to investigate Hamas attacks on US citizens and assist in hostage rescue missions. Members of JSOC, the US elite Special Operations force with experience in hostage rescues, are also working in Israel in collaboration with US intelligence officers.
In October, JSOC was ready to enter Gaza to rescue US citizens held by Hamas, but the mission, described by US officials as “an exceptionally dangerous mission,” never took place.
“If we managed to unilaterally get information that we could act on, and we thought we could actually get US people out alive, we could act, but there was genuinely very little information specifically about US hostages,” one official told the Post.
{Dov T. Heller – Matzav.com}
