The U.S. bill S.4615 contains a little-discussed but significant provision: Section 622, which concerns the strengthening of intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel.
For the United States, the issue raises serious questions about national security decision-making, intelligence oversight, and the conditions under which intelligence sharing can be reduced or suspended. But it does not concern the United States and Israel alone.
If Washington makes this channel of intelligence sharing more stable and harder to reverse, states that cooperate with the United States must also ask where the information they provide could go, under what limits, and subject to what democratic oversight.
For this reason, it is useful to examine what Section 622 would change and what implications it could have beyond the United States, beginning with Japan.
1. Existing U.S.-Israel intelligence sharing
U.S.-Israel intelligence and security cooperation did not begin with S.4615. Contacts and cooperation between intelligence services can be traced back at least to the 1950s. Israel’s strategic importance for the United States increased after the 1967 war, and the relationship deepened through military assistance and defense cooperation from the 1970s onward. The 1981 U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding was not a treaty, but it formally marked an important stage in strategic cooperation between the two governments.
Later legislation, including the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012 and the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014, further embedded this relationship in U.S. domestic law. These laws should not be confused with a treaty imposing reciprocal obligations on both states. Rather, they form part of a U.S. legal and policy framework supporting cooperation with Israel.
Much of the existing intelligence relationship has developed through memoranda of understanding, administrative arrangements, agency-level rules, classified procedures, budgetary measures, and policy statements, largely outside a comprehensive statutory framework. Reporting based on the Snowden documents also indicated the existence of a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and Israel concerning the sharing of raw SIGINT. Section 622 should therefore be read as an attempt to legally reposition and harden an already deep bilateral intelligence relationship.
2. Comparison with Five Eyes
Five Eyes is a long-standing intelligence-sharing framework among the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with SIGINT cooperation at its core. Among the member states, there is a high level of trust and a strong operational expectation that information will generally be shared, while each state still retains room to act independently and withhold certain information.
By contrast, Section 622 would impose on the U.S. President a legal obligation, under U.S. domestic law, to expand and entrench intelligence sharing with Israel, and it may also connect that sharing to intelligence cooperation with Abraham Accords countries and other Middle Eastern regional partners. The two frameworks should therefore be understood as qualitatively different intelligence-sharing arrangements.
3. What Section 622 changes
The core of Section 622 is that it seeks to fix the direction of sharing in law. The provision is titled “United States-Israel intelligence sharing enhancement” and states U.S. policy to maintain and strengthen the strategic security partnership with Israel; counter terrorism, proliferation, cyber threats, sanctions evasion, Iran and Iran-aligned actors; and support integrated air and missile defense, early warning, and broader intelligence-sharing frameworks.
Section 622 would also add a new provision to Title XI of the National Security Act of 1947. The President, acting through the Director of National Intelligence and, as necessary, the Secretary of Defense, would be required to expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel. The scope includes cyber threats, terrorism, sanctions evasion, plans and intentions of state and non-state actors, adversarial technology proliferation, missile threats, unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and air and space domain awareness.
The most significant qualitative change concerns limits on reduction. Intelligence sharing and related security information exchanges with Israel may not be suspended, reduced, or otherwise materially limited unless the President identifies a specific and identifiable national-security concern. Any change must also be documented and reported to the congressional intelligence committees within 15 days.
Oversight provisions usually restrain executive power. Here, however, congressional notification may also operate as a source of political and institutional pressure to continue sharing and make reduction more difficult.
4. Why this deserves attention
Three points deserve particular attention. First, the text is weak in explicit limits concerning human rights, international humanitarian law, civilian harm, and targeting. Second, intelligence sharing and analytic cooperation with Abraham Accords countries could connect U.S.-Israel intelligence sharing to a broader regional security integration centered on Israel. Third, the annual reporting structure is designed to identify barriers to “deeper intelligence integration,” which may normalize further expansion of sharing.
The provision does contain safeguards concerning applicable law, protection of intelligence sources and methods, counterintelligence risk, and recipient security. But these safeguards mainly protect the secrecy and security of U.S. intelligence. The text is much less specific about how shared intelligence may be used in military operations, whether it may be passed onward to third parties, or how risks to civilians and compliance with international humanitarian law would be reviewed.
The issue is therefore not simply “more sharing” or “less sharing.” What matters is who shares what, for what purpose, within what scope, and whether there is a mechanism for reviewing later use.
5. Implications for other countries’ security policies
Section 622 has immediate significance for Japan. If Japan strengthens intelligence sharing with the United States, it needs to consider in advance the scope of sharing, onward transfer to third countries, permitted purposes, possible connection to military operations, independence of analysis, parliamentary oversight, and accountability if problems arise.
Five Eyes countries should also pay attention. Section 622 does not impose legal obligations on them. Yet in a U.S.-centered intelligence-sharing environment, it is worth considering how information they provide to the United States could become connected to U.S. sharing with Israel and regional partners.
For countries outside Five Eyes, the question is similar. Any state developing security cooperation or intelligence sharing with the United States must consider the possibility that information it provides could be connected, through the United States, to third-country intelligence-sharing networks. Each country therefore needs to decide how to position scope, onward transfer, purpose limitation, operational use, analytical independence, and parliamentary or equivalent oversight within its own institutional framework.
Note
S.4615 is the Placed on Calendar Senate (PCS) version. It may be handled not as a stand-alone bill, but as part of the final FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act process toward the end of the year.
Despite its significant implications, Section 622 has not become a major issue in mainstream media coverage in the United States or abroad.
Key references
Official text of S.4615: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s4615pcs/html/BILLS-119s4615pcs.htm
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, S.4615, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027, as reported on May 20, 2026. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/2026/05/20/intelligence-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2027-as-reported-on-may-20-2026/
GovInfo, Public Law 112-150, United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012. https://www.govinfo.gov/link/plaw/112/public/150
GovInfo, United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-12451/pdf/COMPS-12451.pdf
The White House, Fact Sheet: Memorandum of Understanding Reached with Israel, September 14, 2016. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/14/fact-sheet-memorandum-understanding-reached-israel
The Guardian, “NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans’ data with Israel,” September 11, 2013.
Responsible Statecraft, “Senate wants to force US to share sensitive intel with Israel,” June 10, 2026.
FMEP Legislative Round-Up, June 5, 2026.
Human Rights Watch, “Congressional Proposal Could Deepen US Complicity,” June 16, 2026.
The Independent, “Trump to massively expand US intelligence sharing with Israel,” June 9, 2026.
Japan Peace Network
