We know when Obamagate ended, but we don’t know when the policy of spying on Americans began. The tangled roots of the domestic surveillance of political opponents by the NSA predate the alarmism about Russia. Tracing them back into the fetid swamp takes us not toward Moscow, but to Tehran.

The first public revelation that the White House was spying on high level members of the political opposition came in 2015. Members of Congress had been eavesdropped on as part of an operation to sabotage Prime Minister Netanyahu’s campaign against the Iran Deal. The Israeli leader and his entire country had earlier been targeted by a massive spy campaign to stop Israel from taking out Iran’s nukes.

But the new wave of surveillance was no longer just against a potential Israeli attack on Iran, but was part of a political campaign to win the domestic argument to aid Iran and legalize its nuclear program.

The Wall Street Journal reported that by 2013, surveillance of Netanyahu was focused on protecting the Iran nuclear negotiations. Netanyahu’s invitation to address Congress caught the White House by surprise and the surveillance was not only directed at Israelis or even pro-Israel Americans, but members of Congress who were skeptical that the Islamic terror regime would ever scuttle its nukes.