Israel worried after Trump divulged IS plot to Russia

TEL AVIV: Israeli intelligence experts are gravely concerned that United States President Donald Trump’s sharing of classified information with Russia may have compromised an Israeli agent, but don’t expect any long-term consequences for intelligence cooperation.

Trump has confirmed via Twitter that during a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the White House last week that he shared information related to a potential airline plot by Islamic State, thought to involve a laptop bomb.

The New York Times, citing a current and a former US official, reported on Tuesday that the information Trump divulged came from an Israeli intelligence asset in Syria.

On Tuesday, Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss his visit to Israel next week, but the two did not discuss the intelligence leak during their 20-minute conversation.

Israeli intelligence experts said they could not confirm whether an Israeli asset was the source. But they said Israel had developed a deep network of human and signal intelligence across the region and it was plausible that it had managed to infiltrate IS as part of that long-running effort. Reuters