Israel shared intel on Iranian hardliners’ desire to target Trump, sources say, as Netanyahu looks to influence course of war

By Zachary Cohen, Tal Shalev, CNN

(CNN) — The Israeli intelligence shared with the Trump administration of Iranian threats to assassinate President Donald Trump reflected a desire among elements of Tehran’s hardline leadership to target the American leader, according to an Israeli source and a US official, rather than a specific, detailed plan to carry out such an operation.

The new commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Ahmad Vahidi, was part of the group advocating for such a plan, the Israeli source told CNN. Vahidi has been included in lists of “obstructionists” within the regime who are viewed by the Trump administration as actively undermining negotiations, according to a source familiar with US planning. The US has considered directly targeting leaders on the list if full-scale war resumes, the source said.

Two US sources familiar with the matter said recent US intelligence assessments show no indication of a new, specific Iranian plot to kill Trump, but rather a steady drumbeat of chatter about various Iranian actors wanting to do so. The desire to target Trump is not unique to Iran’s leadership. Mourners at the days-long funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by Israel in the opening strikes of the war in late-February, held signs calling on Iran to kill Trump.

In a Friday interview with the New York Post Trump downplayed the significance of the Israeli intelligence, first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, saying that Iran had long threatened his life.

“Israel came up with nothing,” he said, describing himself as Iran’s “number one” target “for a long time.”

While US intelligence agencies have continued to pick up chatter about Iranian officials’ threats to Trump, the US president made a surprise swap of aircraft on his way back from a NATO summit on Wednesday.

Instead of the new airplane that had been retrofitted after it was donated by Qatar and only began service this month, Trump used an older aircraft that has ferried presidents for decades.

The switch was made, in part, because of security concerns around the escalating conflict in Iran, according to four US officials.

While sources at the time said there was no specific, new threat to Trump’s life, the president had mentioned the possibility of an assassination attempt from Iran during the summit, following fresh US strikes on the country that shares a border with Turkey.

The intelligence sharing by Israeli officials comes at a time when Israel has been increasingly sidelined as the Trump administration grapples with how to end its war with Iran. Two Israeli sources say the Trump administration doesn’t want Israel involved in the fighting over concerns of losing control of the conflict.

One of the sources said the prevailing Israeli assessment is that Trump does not want a return to a full-scale war and that the most he may be willing to do is to reinstate the naval blockade on Iranian ports.

“This is fake news,” a US official said when asked about Israeli officials interpretation of Trump’s view. “The United States has a strong relationship with Israel, which contributed to the resounding success of Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury. We remain in close coordination with our Israeli partners.”

Trump, on Friday, posted to Truth Social that “the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER!,” referencing Iranian leadership, while adding that he had agreed to continue talks aimed at restoring a pause in fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been skeptical of Iran’s intentions in ongoing talks and has never believed Tehran was negotiating in good faith. Instead, Netanyahu has favored a return to war in an effort to weaken the regime.

US intelligence officials are broadly aware that Israel feels cut out of the decision-making process and is ramping up efforts to influence the Trump administration’s thinking on Iran in multiple ways with the goal of steering them away from accepting what it considers a bad deal, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said there is a measure of skepticism within the US intelligence community about information provided by Israel because of that perception of the desire to impact Trump’s decision making.

To that end, Israel has increasingly attempted to feed information, both through the US intelligence community and to other more friendly administration officials that they believe could impact Trump’s thinking on Iran, as part of that effort. That includes how Israeli officials framed the intelligence revealed in recent reporting of the claimed new plot to assassinate Trump, the sources said.

But fundamentally, nothing has changed as far as the threats against Trump since he took office for his second term as far as what the US intel community has been monitoring, one of the sources said.

While US intelligence officials have been concerned that multiple Iranian actors might want to try to assassinate Trump, they have assessed that Iranians either have not been able to develop a plan or have not received approval from Iranian decision-makers to carry out a specific plot, the source added.

During the first Trump administration, the US tracked a number of threats against former officials, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who is a hawk on Iran. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was also a target of the Iranian assassination plot, according to a federal law enforcement source familiar with the investigation and a source close to Pompeo.

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This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this story.