CIA analysts expressed skepticism to the Trump administration about Israeli intelligence regarding an Iranian assassination plot that led the US president to secretly switch planes while departing Turkey last month, according to a Wednesday report.

Israel told the Central Intelligence Agency about the threat, but analysts there didn’t find it compelling, The Washington Post reported, citing current and former US officials familiar with the intelligence.

One of the officials who spoke with the newspaper dismissed the intelligence as “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence,” while another said that “the Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances.”

“They did what they had to do,” that official added.

A former official, meanwhile, was quoted as saying the incident “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.”

That official noted that, according to his understanding, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was briefed on the intelligence, but he chose to fly on the ostensibly threatened plane anyway, suggesting some measure of confidence that it was safe to do so.

The Post said the White House wouldn’t comment directly on the report, though an anonymous US official told it in response that “as the president has said, he has faced numerous threats on his life, including ones from Iran, and every........

© The Times of Israel