Last month, Israel passed intelligence to the US that caused President Donald Trump to change his planes before departing the NATO summit in Turkey.
The Washington Post reports that current and former officials said that Israeli intelligence told the US that Iran was plotting to assassinate Trump in Turkey. The US intelligence community was skeptical about Tel Aviv’s information. Describing the intel, one US official explained, it was “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence.”
President Trump attended the NATO summit in Turkey in July. At the conclusion of the summit, the White House elected not to have Trump board the new Air Force One aircraft and elected to use a legacy plane. However, the President was secretly moved off the second aircraft to an Air Force C-32A.
Current and former officials told The Post that Israel’s intelligence may have been less about warning the President and using fear to influence Trump’s decision-making. It “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it,” a former official explained to the outlet.
The officials believe the intelligence could be used by Israel in an effort to get Trump to escalate the war against Iran and drive a wedge between the US and Turkey.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Thursday that Washington has made a “miscalculation” based on “fake intelligence.”
