An ethics expert is declaring the Trump team "out of control" following a bombshell report by the UK's Observer that aides for the sitting president hired Israeli spies to dig up dirt on two officials in the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal.

"The idea," said an unnamed source familiar the campaign, "was that people acting for Trump would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it."

There’s a reason this has not happened since Nixon. It exposes the Trump aides to criminal and civil liability, depending on the nature of the “dirty ops,” see eg 18 USC 242, 50 USC 1809, 42 USC 1983. Team Trump is out of control. Expect an investigation. https://t.co/23SKYrHgpe — Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) May 6, 2018

The individuals targeted in the "dirty ops" campaign were Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security advisor for strategic communications for former President Barack Obama, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama and national security advisor to former Vice President Biden. Neither had known of the campaign, journalists Mark Townsend and Julian Borger write.

Rhodes, for his part, told the Observer, "I would say that digging up dirt on someone for carrying out their professional responsibilities in their positions as White House officials is a chillingly authoritarian thing to do."

The contact with the Israeli private intelligence agency took place last May, just after Trump's visit to Israel, the second stop of his first trip abroad as president. The line of attack include was to get information on "personal relationships, any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and if they had benefited personally or politically from the peace deal," the news outlet reports.

The agency was also tasked with contacting "prominent Iranian Americans as well as pro-deal journalists—from the New York Times, MSNBC television, the Atlantic, Vox website, and Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper among others—who had frequent contact with Rhodes and Kahl in an attempt to establish whether they had violated any protocols by sharing sensitive intelligence."

Kahl reacted to the reporting on Twitter, calling the campaign "a page right out of the Nixon playbook." It's "Shameful, but sadly unpredictable," he added.

In a page right out of the Nixon playbook, Trump aides reportedly approached an Israeli private intel firm in May 2017 to try to dig up personal dirt on me as part of their efforts to discredit the Iran Deal. Shameful, but sadly unpredictable. https://t.co/QbY6XDXA4Y 1/2 — Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 5, 2018

Rhodes said in a tweet, "This is not behavior that should be acceptable in a democracy."

This is not behavior that should be acceptable in a democracy. It is thuggish, mean-spirited, and casts a chilling and threatening cloud over public service that risks extending far beyond me and @ColinKahl https://t.co/tQY1wOO7Yy — Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) May 6, 2018

In another Twitter thread, Kahl suggested it was possible that the dirty ops campaign also targeted his wife, and referred to suspicious emails she had received in late May and early June of 2017. He wrote: "the fact that I even have to think about the possibility that my family was targeted by people working for the President is yet another sign of the fundamental degradation of our country that Trump has produced.":

<THREAD> According to this story, in May of last year, Team Trump asked an Israeli intel firm to dig up dirt on me as part of an effort to discredit the Iran deal. Tonight, as my wife read this story, that date triggered a very creepy memory.https://t.co/QbY6XDXA4Y 1/10 — Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 6, 2018 This "UK person" said "she" was flying to DC soon and wanted to have coffee with my wife to discuss the possibility of including my daughter's school in their educational fund network. 3/10 SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. Get our best delivered to your inbox.





— Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 6, 2018 There was a website for the firm (which no longer exists, by the way), but it had no depth to it, and there was no detailed information about the "UK person" who reached out to my wife. 5/10 — Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 6, 2018 To test the implausibility, my wife kept trying to encourage the "UK person" over email to meet with other school fundraising officers & leadership while "she" was in DC, providing relevant contact info. But the "UK person" kept insisting that "she" had to meet with my wife. 7/10 — Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 6, 2018 Perhaps it was just a coincidence that this obvious scam targeting my family had all the hallmarks of an intel op and coincided with Team Trump's reported efforts to "dig up dirt" on me. 9/10 — Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 6, 2018 But the fact that I even have to think about the possibility that my family was targeted by people working for the President is yet another sign of the fundamental degradation of our country that Trump has produced. 10/10 — Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 6, 2018

Other journalists and foreign policy analysts took to Twitter to share and react to the Observer's new story, calling the revelations "the latest chapter in Israelgate"; "Nixonian 'dirty tricks'"; and "tantamount to lawlessness":

I can’t get over how brazen this is: they hired an Israeli private intelligence firm to derail a deal that Netanyahu has been campaigning against, and did so by trying to personally destroy the people who negotiated it. https://t.co/Y6ANm4tUFG — Murtaza Mohammad Hussain (@MazMHussain) May 5, 2018 Trump Team into Nixonian “dirty tricks” with Israeli spies; trying to make Obama crew look bad on Iran arms deal https://t.co/mgZyZbkw2B — David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) May 6, 2018 The most concrete evidence thus far of Trump colluding with a foreign power to undermine his political opponents points to Israel. First, Flynn unsuccessfully lobbied Amb. Kislyak on behalf of Netanyahu. And now this, the latest chapter in Israelgate: https://t.co/5FYl744L13 — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 6, 2018 This is tantamount to lawlessness:

In a desperate attempt to justify leaving the JCPOA, Trump retained a covert Israeli spy firm to run a “dirty-ops” campaign, targeting the personal lives of Obama's Iran negotiators.

POTUS used a foreign spy team to target American citizens!!! — Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) May 5, 2018

In a separate piece at the Observer, Borger writes that the contract with the Israeli firm "shows how far President Donald Trump and the hawks around him are willing to go to destroy the agreement."

"The bid to discredit the deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—with compromising information on two of its fiercest advocates from the Obama administration came to nothing," he adds. "Instead, Trump's campaign against it has relied on the simple repetition of derogatory phrases about it being the 'worst deal ever' and 'a major embarrassment.' It has remained a fixed point in Trump's universe."

The revelations come a week before Trump's "fix it or nix it" deadline for the UN-backed deal.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, meanwhile, said Sunday that "If (the U.S.) opts to pull out of the nuclear deal, it will soon realize that this decision will become a historic regret for them."

Obama's top diplomat, former Secretary of State John Kerry, who played the key U.S. role in securing the deal, appears to be working behind the scenes with his former Iranian counterpart in an effort to make sure that doesn't happen.