Get ready for the howls of outrage from the New York Times, the Manchester Guardian, and the Washington Post over the report — a scoop by the Wall Street Journal — that Israel has been spying on the Obama administration’s negotiations with the Iranian mullahs. We’re unlikely to hear the end of it from the newspapers that became the partners of Julian Assange and Wikileaks in disseminating the secrets stolen by Private Manning or pressed for prizes for stories based on classified cables filched by Edward Snowden. This could be epic.

And it’s easy to see why. For what did Israel allegedly do with its inside information on the talks between Secretary of State Kerry and the Iranian regime? It allegedly plotted to leak this material to the United States Congress. Don’t the Israelis realize that President Obama wants to wait to inform Congress on what he’s doing until after the deal has been ratified with a resolution by the United Nations Security Council? Why, if Congress gets hold of the particulars of these secret parleys before the information gets to United Nations, the solons on Capitol Hill might prepare for Iranian perfidy by passing contingent sanctions. And scare the mullahs off.

It happens that we are opposed to any spying on American diplomats (Israel denies that it has been doing such spying). But it is getting ever more difficult to take the claims by the Obama administration at face value. The whole thing reminds us of one of our favorite bio-pics, Richard Loncraine’s film about Winston Churchill in the years of British appeasement of Hitler. It covers the span when Churchill was out of power and at Chartwell, painting his canvases, writing his biography of the Duke of Marlborough, nursing his depression, and trying to warn his own government of the Gathering Storm.

One of the things that Churchill allegedly did during this period was receive intelligence from alarmed British government insiders spying, in effect, against their own government. His motive was to gather evidence of German aims and get that information to the Congr . . . pardon, to the Parliament, which was in the dark. It was portrayed in the film as an illegal, desperate gambit that nonetheless put Churchill in a position to provide an early alert to his colleagues in Britain’s legislature of the dangers it was about to face. He was rewarded by being returned to power as First Lord of the Admiralty.

No such reward will be waiting for Prime Minister Netanyahu if it turns out that the Israelis were spying on American diplomats and sharing the information with the American Congress. The House speaker, John Boehner, says he is shocked by the allegation and doesn’t know of any information from such an alleged plot reaching the Congress. The story is young, and we will see. But if it turns out that there are such secrets, maybe someone will share them with Julian Assange or Edward Snowden so that our enemies can read them in the New York Times or the Guardian.