The U.S. intelligence community has been warning against relying on information on Iran provided by Israel.

A former senior CIA official has warned that Israel could be skewing intelligence as part of its campaign for a U.S.-led strike on Iran. The former official, Ray McGovern, said Israel could be pressuring President Barack Obama to attack Teheran as part of the presidential campaign.

“The key question is whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will interpret the presidential campaign rhetoric as an open invitation to provoke hostilities with Iran, in the expectation that President Obama will feel forced to jump in with both feet in support of our ‘ally’ Israel,” McGovern said in an analysis for the U.S.newspaper Baltimore Sun.

Congressional sources said the analysis was part of a campaign by the CIA and others in the intelligence community to discredit Israel amid Iran’s drive toward nuclear weapons. They cited numerous leaks over the last year from the White House and other parts of the Obama administration that portrayed Israel as an unreliable ally of Washington.

McGovern, as other former CIA officials, focused his attack on Netanyahu, accused of trying to exploit the race between Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. McGovern, who served with the CIA analysis division and responsible for preparing the daily brief to the president, said the Israeli campaign was similar to the months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The former analyst cited Netanyahu’s charge that Iran was responsible for the suicide bombing that killed eight Israeli tourists in Bulgaria on July 18. The Baltimore Sun, said to have been one of several publications offered McGovern’s piece, has been regarded as a pro-Israeli newspaper linked to the Democratic Party.

“The likelihood of hostilities with Iran before the presidential election in November is increasing,” McGovern wrote. “Beware of ‘fixed’ intelligence. Netanyahu’s rhetoric has eerie echoes of the run-up to the Iraq war.”

McGovern’s remarks appeared to have reflected the Obama administration.

On July 31, State Department counter-insurgency coordinator Daniel Benjamin cited Iran as the preeminent state sponsor of terrorism, but refused to support Netanyahu’s assertion that Teheran was behind the bombing in Bulgaria.

“I’m going to leave that to the Bulgarians to characterize,” Benjamin said.

In contrast, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Israel’s intelligence on Iran has been “excellent.” He said Netanyahu’s assessment of
Iran as intent on building a nuclear weapon was correct and that Israel would not need to destroy all of Iran’s assets.

“All the Israelis need to do is delay them [the Iranians],” Rumsfeld told the U.S. network Fox News. “You don’t need to do something like that
100 percent, like they were able to do in Iraq when they had the bombing raid and took out the Iraqi nuclear facility, or in Syria, where they took
out the Syrian nuclear facility.”

On July 31, Netanyahu said he was not planning war against Iran. The statement was issued as U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Israel for talks on Iran and Syria, including his ninth meeting with Barak since 2011. As late as January 2012, Panetta asserted that Iran was not trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

“What we are discussing is various contingencies and how we would respond,” Panetta said. “We don’t talk about specific military plans. We continue to run a number of options in that area, but the discussions I will have in Israel [will be to determine] the threat we are confronting and to
share both information and intelligence on it.”

The U.S. Congress has sought to block the anti-Israel leaks that purportedly stem from the intelligence community. In mid-July, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved an amendment to the intelligence authorization bill that required the panel to be notified of any authorized disclosure of intelligence by any “officer, employee or contractor of the Executive Branch.”

“Given the pattern of leaks out of the White House, that any prime minister of Israel would not call the United States and give clear intentions as to what they plan to do,” Rumsfeld said.