Times of Israel Leads With CIA Doubt About the Israeli Warning That Moved Trump’s Plane
The paper’s 13 August liveblog opens at 06:02 with a Washington Post report that CIA analysts had “low confidence” in Israeli intelligence on an Iranian threat to Air Force One. Nobody involved has said so on the record.
The Times of Israel’s live file for Thursday leads at 06:02 with an aggregation: the Washington Post reporting that CIA analysts told the administration they had low confidence in the Israeli intelligence about an Iranian threat that led Donald Trump to switch aircraft in Turkey. CBS is cited separately as reporting that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and several other close aides travelled with Trump on the decoy flight. The threat claim itself entered the record a day earlier from Trump’s own mouth: Haaretz’s live file of 12 August runs under the slug “trump-says-advisers-wanted-him-off-air-force-one-in-turkey-due-to-iranian-threat.” The chain is therefore an Israeli outlet citing an American paper citing unnamed American analysts, assessing intelligence supplied by Israel, about a decision the American president has already described himself. No agency, no Israeli official and no named US official has confirmed any part of the downgrade.
The same liveblog series carries the other half of the week’s Iran file, and it splits the same way. Trump posted that the United States has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz and that the naval blockade of Iranian ports will continue — the headline claim on the Times of Israel’s 12 August file — telling reporters on 11 August that the strait had been swept for mines. Iran’s answer, per the same file, is that the waterway stays shut until its conditions are met; Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Iran will not buckle under sanctions, which he said only reduce the chances of a diplomatic resolution. CNN, which counts the eighth round of US sanctions on Iran this year, reports strait traffic “subdued” over the past week and “weakened further.” Al Jazeera’s 12 August piece is built on the same falling transit figures.
Assessment: “Low confidence” is an analytic register, not a debunking; it can attach to intelligence that turns out to be correct. What is new is the placement. An Israeli outlet leading its day with an American doubt about an Israeli product treats Israeli intelligence credibility in Washington as the story, not the threat. Read both halves of the file together and the pattern is a US administration making declaratory claims — the plot, the total control — that the retrievable numbers do not yet carry. Watch for anyone going on the record. Until then this is a briefing war conducted through two capitals' newspapers.