U.S. House speaker "shocked" about Israel's spying on nuke talks with Iran

Speaker of U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner said Tuesday that he was "shocked" and "baffled" to learn of Israel's act of spying on the nuclear talks with Iran and sharing the information with some American lawmakers with a view to undermining the diplomacy.

The top Republican in Congress, who will make a trip to Israel later this month, said he was "a bit shocked" to read the eavesdropping story carried by The Wall Street Journal Tuesday.

"Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran's nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks," the paper said, quoting current and former U.S. officials.

In addition, Israel obtained information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the report said.

U.S. officials described the operation as part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to "penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal."

"It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other, it is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy," a senior official was quoting as saying in the report.

Like Netanyahu, many U.S. lawmakers have voiced opposition to any deal that does not dismantle Iran's nuclear program, a goal the Obama administration has declared impossible.

"There was no information revealed to me whatsoever," Boehner told reporters.

"I'm shocked by the fact that there were reports in this press article that information was being passed on by the Israelis to members of Congress," he said. "I'm not aware of that at all. I'm baffled by it."

President Barack Obama, in his appearance at a joint press conference with visiting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, said his administration had not just briefed Congress, but also Israel and other partners in the region and around the world about the progress made in talks with Iran.

"I do want to be clear that it's an absurd notion that Congress would have to rely on any foreign government to gain insight into the nuclear negotiations with Iran," said State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki.

Both Obama and Psaki would not comment on the eavesdropping story, citing rules on intelligence matters.

U.S.-Israeli relations have been brought to a new low, first by Netanyahu's criticism of a potential "bad" deal with Iran in his speech to a joint session of U.S. Congress early this month, then by the premier's campaign pledge to reject a Palestinian state and build thousands more of settler homes in East Jerusalem and his targeting of Arab-Israeli voters.

Netanyahu's attempt after re-election last week to undo the damage by reaffirming his commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians has largely failed to move Washington.

"I took him at his word that that's what he meant," Obama said at his joint press conference with Ghani. "And I think a lot of voters inside of Israel understood him to be saying that fairly unequivocally."

Obama reaffirmed his administration's efforts to reevaluate its handling of Israeli-Palestinian relations over the coming years, as the possibility of "two states living side by side in peace and security" seems "very dim" now.

He reiterated, however, his administration's commitment to a two-state solution, calling it "the best path forward for Israel's security, for Palestinian aspirations and for regional stability." Endite