Washington DC [USA], May 17 : It has emerged that the classified intelligence that U.S. President Donald Trump disclosed in a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the White House was provided by Israel.
The New York Times said citing a current and a former American official familiar with how the United States obtained the information that Israel had provided Washington with the highly classified information about the Islamic State.
Israel is one of the United States' most important allies and a major intelligence collector in the Middle East and the revelation of Israel's most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries.
Israeli officials, however, did not confirm that they were the source of the information. In a statement Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer reaffirmed that the two countries would maintain a close counterterrorism relationship.
"Israel has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump," Dermer said.
After the Washington Post reported that President Trump revealed some classified information about ISIS to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a recent meeting, White House officials denounced the accusations.
"I was in the room. It didn't happen," National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said in a statement as he called the report false. However, Trump said on Tuesday on Twitter that he had an "absolute right" to share information in the interest of fighting terrorism and called it a "very, very successful meeting".
Source: ANI
