On Wednesday, a senior Israeli army official confirmed that Israel is supplying intelligence information to the United States to help fight the Islamic State of Iran and Syria (ISIS).

Interviewing with the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, the official also focused on the terrorist group’s financing.

A senior Israel Defense Forces officer said Wednesday that the Islamic State organization has amassed extraordinary economic resources that are enabling it to entrench itself in wide areas of Syria and Iraq and form alliances with tribes and other groups in those regions. According to the officer, the group controls areas that contain some 60 active oil fields.

He said the Islamic State’s income from these oil fields is estimated at $3 million to $6 million a day. Alongside its oil revenues, the group also finances its activities by collecting ransoms for hostages and through various forms of theft and extortion.

While the official did not consider ISIS an immediate threat to Israel, he added that the terrorist organization “should be taken seriously.”

Last week, Reuters reported that a Western diplomat acknowledged “Israeli spy satellites, overflying Iraq at angles and frequencies unavailable from U.S. satellites, had provided images that allowed the Pentagon to ‘fill out its information and get a better battle damage assessments’ after strikes on Islamic State targets.”

Turkey, a country that the United States had recruited to fight ISIS, is one of the biggest markets for oil smuggled by ISIS.

[Photo: Wall Street Journal / YouTube ]