No one should be in the least bit surprised that the United States and Israel continue to spy on each other, despite being longtime close allies.

Israel’s strategic position in the world’s most volatile region pretty much guarantees that. So does Jerusalem’s dependence on continued US support and goodwill.

But news that the Obama administration targeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for continued close electronic surveillance — even as it curbed it for other friendly leaders — still is pretty startling.

As is The Wall Street Journal’s disclosure that the sweep included conversations with US Jewish groups and members of Congress.

The last is especially critical: Careful rules govern how the National Security Agency can handle such intercepted conversations, and it’s not clear they were followed.

But it’s also significant that Team Obama apparently had no problem with spying on Americans engaged in legitimate political activity — in this case, trying to block the president’s dubious nuclear deal with Iran.

The White House took pains not to leave a paper trail. As one senior official told the Journal: “We didn’t say, ‘Do it.’ We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it’.”

As former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams writes in National Review, what happened here is that “the administration faced a battle in Congress and it spied on the other side” — successfully, we’d add, since the Iran deal went through.

Had a Republican administration done this stuff, Democrats on Capitol Hill would be gearing up Watergate-style investigative hearings and talking impeachment. As Abrams notes, it ought to be a major scandal now.