Vice President JD Vance has raised some eyebrows in Washington after responding to a Fox News question about pervasive Israeli spying on top Trump administration and US intelligence officials.

NBC reported days ago that the Pentagon has officially elevated Israel's counterintelligence threat level to its highest possible category, driven by surging internal alarm that this primary Mideast regional ally is aggressively ramping up espionage operations targeting senior US officials - even Trump's own top Iran negotiator.

While the White House has officially denied the report and major allegations of egregious levels of ally on ally spying, Vance did not echo that rejection, interestingly enough. Watch:

Asked by reporter Jesse Waters "how concerned" he was about "Israel spying on the United States" - Vance acknowledged the following:

“Well look, obviously the Israelis and I – excuse me, the Israelis and the United States have a lot of shared interests, but we also have some situations where our interests diverge,” Vance told Waters.

“The president has been very clear that while Israel obviously has some objectives that it has, the United States’ main objective in Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, and we’ve actually created the space necessary where the president believes that we can get the long-term settlement to Iran’s nuclear deal.”

One source reacted to the response from the White House number two as follows: "The White House vehemently denied a report last Friday about a heightened counterintelligence threat, but on Monday night, Vice President JD Vance appeared to undercut that denial with a blatant but indirect admission."

According to prior reporting, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has been broadcasting an internal alert raising Israel's specific threat designation to "critical". According to details revealed over the weekend:

The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said.

The DIA assessment includes a seven-page document and features a chart, according to one of the current U.S. officials. The document says the assessment of Israel is that its ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a “critical level,” according to the official.

And parallel to this, a report by the NY Times lists out names that are very high level within the Trump administration. Israel has allegedly focused its electronic and human efforts to eavesdrop on the following officials (likely among others):

• Steve Witkoff, Trump’s premier regional negotiator.
• Elbridge A. Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official.
• Michael P. DiMino IV, one of Colby’s primary deputies.

The Israeli embassy in Washingtons has slammed the reports as 'completely false': "This entire story is false and sourced to someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of what’s going on," it said in a statement.

But the major US media reports highlight American intel officials who don't try and tone down or couch their words. Instead they speak of "unhinged" Israeli spying on US government officials.

Vance also said in the fresh Tuesday comments that a pending peace deal between Washington and Tehran was a “home run for the American people,” whether or not Israel liked it.