Donald J. Trump is likely going to find out just how strong — or fragile — is the friendship and alliance between the United States and Israel.
The president has concluded a successful visit to Saudi Arabia. He will fly to Israel. My trick knee tells me the reception he gets will be publicly joyful and perhaps privately a good bit chillier.
You see, Trump made a mistake back home, in the White House. He was visiting with two Russian dignitaries when he blurted out something of great interest to his Russian guests: it involved some classified information regarding the ongoing fight against the Islamic State.
The information, though, had been obtained by U.S. intelligence authorities from another source. That source, dadgummit anyway, happened to be Israel.
The president was boasting to the Russians about the “great intel” he gets. Then out it came. He blabbed when he shouldn’t have.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster later issued a sort of non-denial denial, in which he said the president didn’t reveal any tactical or operational secrets to the Russians. Big bleeping deal! They’re smart and sophisticated enough to cobble together pieces of information and develop their own strategies based on what they hear.
Reports have been circulating since then that the Israelis’ spies working within Iran might be in danger, given that the Russians and the Islamic Republic of Iran are close allies. The Israelis have deep-cover agents working throughout the Middle East, scouring their sources for intelligence regarding the sworn enemy of civilized nations around the world. That would be ISIS.
Just how angry are the Israelis? How ticked off is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Publicly, he hasn’t much. It well might be a different matter when the two men meet in private.
I think we ought to look for words like “frank” and “candid” when U.S. and Israeli flacks describe the closed-door meetings between Trump and Netanyahu. If either description surfaces, my hunch is that Netanyahu will have given the U.S. president a major-league tongue lashing.