Congressman Suggests Israel Ginned Up Alleged Iranian Trump Assassination Plot to ‘Buck Up’ President

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) pumped the brakes on an Israeli intelligence assessment that concluded Iran was “considering” a new plot to assassinate President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli officials shared the assessment with their U.S. counterparts.

Multiple news outlets relayed the scoop uncritically, even after it was reported in April that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had successfully lobbied Trump to bomb Iran by sharing intel with him, indicating that Iran’s regime could be toppled relatively easily. That assessment turned out to be erroneous.

Shortly after the Journal published its report, Smith appeared on The Source, where CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked, What’s your sense about these new reports that Israel told the U.S. there is a new Iranian plot to try to kill the president?”

Smith replied:

Well, it’s very hard to tell. I mean, certainly Iran has made the statement… since the killing of Soleimani over six years ago now. It’s also easy to see that Israel would want to sort of buck up Trump, make him more willing to take on Iran more strongly. Netanyahu has been pushing for that tougher stance, more hawkish approach to Iran for quite some time now, crucially, without any clear plan for how that’s going to turn into some sort of success in terms of fundamentally breaking the Iranian regime. But Israel certainly has that interest. So it’s hard to know. It’s hard to know exactly what that intel is.

The New York Times reported that in February, Netanyahu gave a presentation in the White House Situation Room, where he said the Islamic Republic was ripe for regime change.

“Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks,” the Times reported. “The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.”

Despite Israeli insistence that the Iranians could not close the strait, they severely restricted travel through the vital passageway, where ships are still taking fire from Iranian drones. Moreover, Iran has managed to hit targets across the Middle East.

After Netanyahu concluded his presentation and left the Situation Room, Secretary Marco Rubio reportedly told Trump and others present, “It’s bullsh*t.”

According to former Secretary of State John Kerry, Netanyahu urged at least three successive U.S. presidents to launch strikes on Iran. Netanyahu has claimed for more than 30 years that Iran is only a few years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Watch above via CNN.

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