US officials doubted Israeli Trump threat warnings

Some US intelligence officials were skeptical of Israeli warnings about Iranian assassination threats against President Donald Trump before his departure from a NATO summit in Turkey, The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday, citing The Washington Post.

The report said the warnings led Trump to switch aircraft while leaving the summit. A current or former US official told The Washington Post that CIA analysts who received the Israeli information did not see it as compelling.

Another official described the threats as “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence,” according to the report. Other intelligence officials accused Israel of sharing the warnings to influence Trump’s decision-making in the region, with one saying the alert “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.”

The US Secret Service still treated the intelligence seriously and began an operation to obscure Trump’s travel plan, The Jerusalem Post reported. “The Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances,” one official told The Washington Post. “They did what they had to do.”

Trump told reporters Tuesday that the Secret Service makes security decisions and that he follows its instructions. “They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, for safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say,” he said.