INTELLIGENCE and security are at odds. Intelligence includes mental abilities like reasoning and problem-solving, official inquisitiveness, and now artificial intelligence. The Iranians are trying to decide which intelligence (if any) President Donald Trump relied upon when he switched planes ‘for security concerns’ at Ankara airport on July 8. That of his Secret Service and military advisers? “They wanted me to go in a different flight, a different plane,” Trump explained. “I just have to do what they say.”

The crew? They hid him in a catering truck, shifting him from Air Force One to a military plane.

His own? In which case, why did he opt for the latter — in his own words, the “greater risk” because the Iranians were more likely “to go for it”? Trump had forgotten the assassination in Turkiye that occurred on Oct 2, 2018, when Saudi agents butchered the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

One recalls that security concerns caused president Bill Clinton to switch planes before his visit to Islamabad in March 2000. A witness reported that “a decoy jet with all of the markings of Air Force One touched down in full view of the news media, and a Secret Service........

© Dawn