{"id":248205,"date":"2026-08-13T22:58:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T22:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/248205\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T22:58:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T22:58:20","slug":"israeli-warning-led-to-air-force-one-switch-one-of-many-iran-plot-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/248205\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli warning led to Air Force One switch; one of many Iran plot tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (Reuters)\u00a0–\u00a0The U.S. has received several warnings from Israel over the past year that Iran intended to assassinate President Donald Trump, including before\u00a0a secret Air Force One ruse\u00a0in Turkey<\/a>, that U.S. intelligence officials could not independently verify, according to a current U.S. official and two former officials.<\/p>\n

The warnings, passed to U.S. intelligence agencies and in some cases relayed directly by Israeli officials to senior White House officials, included possible plots to shoot Trump with a sniper or recruit someone to attack him with a knife at a large public event, the sources said. The tips began in the lead-up to the 12-day war in June 2025 and intensified prior to the U.S. decision to go to\u00a0war in Iran\u00a0in February, the sources said.<\/p>\n

The most detailed warning came ahead of\u00a0the NATO summit in Ankara<\/a>\u00a0in July, the U.S. official and the other person familiar with the matter said. Israeli officials briefed the White House about intelligence that indicated Iran may try to kill Trump, potentially with a shoulder-launched missile, while\u00a0he traveled on Air Force One\u00a0for the summit<\/a>, the officials said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0How did Trump’s secret Air Force One switch work?\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. intelligence community has long assessed that Iran wants to retaliate for Trump’s killing of Iranian military commander\u00a0Qassem Soleimani<\/a>\u00a0in 2020. But the Central Intelligence Agency has not been able to corroborate some of the\u00a0specific threats against Trump’s life\u00a0shared by Israeli intelligence since early last year, the officials said.<\/p>\n

In the case of the NATO<\/a> episode, a Turkish official said the country’s intelligence agencies also did not have any evidence to corroborate the Israeli claim about the threat to Trump’s life,\u00a0an assessment the host country shared with Americans.<\/p>\n

Despite the lack of verification, White House officials and the Secret Service<\/a> have taken steps to mitigate the threats out of an abundance of caution, including an extraordinary deception operation during the Turkey trip that involved\u00a0moving Trump<\/a> from Air Force One to a different aircraft\u00a0for his flight out of the country.<\/p>\n

That episode\u00a0underscores\u00a0how Israeli intelligence is influencing the Trump administration’s decision-making about Iran at a time of heightened tensions with Tehran \u2014 and broader disagreement between U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments on Iran’s threat overall.<\/p>\n

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Earlier this year, American intelligence agencies assessed that Iran was not actively\u00a0building a nuclear weapon, even as Israel argued Tehran posed an urgent threat. Despite the reports from the U.S. intelligence community, Trump moved forward with strikes in Iran in February. Trump also took into consideration intelligence shared by Israel that Tehran had tried to assassinate him before launching the military campaign, as Reuters previously reported.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy disputed that Israel was using its intelligence to influence U.S. policy on Iran.<\/p>\n

“The same people who claim that Israel is trying to influence U.S. policy through alleged intelligence sharing would just as soon accuse Israel of concealing critical information if it benefited their own agenda,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The White House and CIA<\/a> both declined comment.<\/p>\n

A close alliance<\/p>\n

The U.S. has long relied heavily on Israeli intelligence<\/a> on Middle East matters, particularly as they relate to Iran.<\/p>\n

The current and former officials said Israeli intelligence on Iran typically flows to the CIA or the National Security Agency through formal channels and is subsequently analyzed, two former U.S. officials said.<\/p>\n

The U.S. intelligence agencies often can’t verify Israeli intelligence but will use other forms of information to make judgment calls on its authenticity and accuracy, the officials said.<\/p>\n

In several instances over the course of the two U.S. military offensives in Iran, the CIA assessed it had “low confidence” in the Israeli intelligence about the threats posed by Iran, including any plans to assassinate Trump, according to one former official and another person familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

It is unclear how widely those assessments have been circulated inside the administration.<\/p>\n

The NSA<\/a> declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Russian assassin hunting American-Ukrainian caught, Poland says\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Two of the former U.S. officials described to Reuters several instances in which senior Israeli officials and representatives over the last year called the White House, including in the Situation Room, to brief senior Trump officials on Iranian threats directly.<\/p>\n

The direct engagement comes amid a breakdown in U.S. intelligence sharing inside the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Last year, amid increased tensions with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA stopped coordinating and sharing intelligence with the National Intelligence Council, the U.S. intelligence community’s elite analytical group overseen by ODNI<\/a>, the former officials said. The CIA was the largest contributor to NIC assessments.<\/p>\n

Now, there are fewer comprehensive intelligence community assessments produced by the NIC, including those focused on Iran, the officials and another person familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Erin Banco in Washington; additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; editing by Colleen Jenkins and Nick Zieminski)<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NewsNation.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (Reuters)\u00a0–\u00a0The U.S. has received several warnings from Israel over the past year that Iran intended to assassinate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[5781,38,1281,10424,20797,34,37,883,10381,1537],"class_list":["post-248205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-air-force-one","tag-donald-trump","tag-intelligence","tag-intelligence-agencies","tag-intelligence-community","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-israeli-intelligence","tag-israeli-officials","tag-white-house"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117090680975532678","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}