CIA Doubts Israeli Intelligence on Iranian Plot to Assassinate Trump

Washington, Agencies: U.S. intelligence officials cast doubt on Israeli intelligence reporting an Iranian threat to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump, information that subsequently prompted an exceptional security maneuver in which Trump secretly departed Turkey aboard an alternative military aircraft, according to The Washington Post, which cited current and former U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence assessments.

One official stated that the Israeli government conveyed the information to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but agency analysts did not find the data convincing and relayed their doubts to officials in the Trump administration. Another official described reports regarding the threat to Trump’s life as information “sourced from Israel and not born of U.S. intelligence,” adding that it was assessed as having “low confidence.”

However, U.S. skepticism about the existence of an imminent threat to the president led the White House last month to conceal Trump’s movements as he left the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Ankara on July 8. A current and a former U.S. intelligence official believed that Israel’s transmission of the warning about the threat to Trump’s life may have aimed more at influencing the president’s decisions and U.S. policy in the region than at providing Washington with information.

The former U.S. official, familiar with the matter, said the warning “fits within a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reports that some officials view as designed to influence the president’s decision-making process as much as to inform him.”

The Washington Post had previously revealed that Trump secretly departed Turkey aboard a small military aircraft following the NATO summit on July 8, after a specific Iranian threat to assassinate him or target his plane was detected. Meanwhile, Air Force One, carrying journalists and White House staff, took off as a decoy. The report noted that Trump secretly left the aircraft and was transported inside an airport aircraft catering truck to a third plane, a C-32A belonging to the U.S. Air Force, which carried him and a limited number of senior aides to the United Kingdom.

In his first public comment on the secret operation, Trump said the decision to use an alternative aircraft was made by the Secret Service. He told reporters, “It’s really up to the Secret Service. I just do what they want to do,” adding, “They wanted me to go on a different trip and on a different plane with a similar level of security... I do what they tell me to do.”

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. official told Reuters that two senior members of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, departed the NATO summit aboard the plane that was actually a decoy. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Rubio was aware of the change and the details of the underlying threat but could not or would not disclose why he remained on the plane. The official added that Bessent was likely aware of the situation but was not certain.

Nevertheless, the official noted that the security measures taken to protect the president, particularly given that he had been the target of several assassination attempts, were even stricter than those followed to protect senior members of his government.