“If it is true that they have spied on us, it is a very disappointing act that undermines the South Korea-U.S. alliance, which is based on mutual trust,” Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, told reporters on Tuesday. If it was true, he added, Washington should also apologize to the South Korean people.
In Cairo, Egypt’s government denied a Washington Post report, citing a leaked intelligence document the paper had obtained, which said that the country had planned to secretly produce rockets, artillery rounds and gunpowder for Russia. Egypt is one of the world’s top recipients of American aid.
John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said the United States had “seen no indication that Egypt is providing lethal weaponry capabilities to Russia.”
The United Arab Emirates, another close American partner, declared as “categorically false” an assertion reported by The Associated Press, citing another document, that the Persian Gulf monarchy had agreed to deepen ties with Russian intelligence agencies and cooperate against the United States and Britain.
Among Israelis, there was only a muted reaction to the reminder that U.S. intelligence agencies spy on their country and other allies. It has long been known that Washington surveils Israeli officials. Documents leaked a decade ago by Edward Snowden, for instance, showed that the United States had intercepted the email of senior Israeli officials like Ehud Olmert, Israel’s former prime minister.
The Israeli government was also careful not to criticize the U.S. government for the latest leak. The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, strongly rejected the suggestion that the Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency, had fomented anti-government protest — but attributed the claim to the “American press,” rather than U.S. officials.
More generally, there was bemusement about the U.S. assertions about the Mossad, which raised questions about the quality of U.S. intelligence gathering and analysis.