President Donald Trump issued a stark warning on Tuesday, stating that he has instructed his advisers to take decisive action against Iran in the event of an assassination attempt on his life. During a press briefing while signing an executive order aimed at imposing maximum pressure on Tehran, Trump declared, “If they did that, they would be obliterated. I’ve left instructions: if they do it, they get obliterated—there won’t be anything left.”
In the event of Trump’s assassination, Vice President JD Vance would become president but might not be bound by any instructions Trump may have left behind. Federal officials have been tracking Iranian threats against Trump and other officials since at least a couple of years ago. Trump had ordered the 2020 drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, then commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.
In July, extra security precautions were taken following a specific threat against Trump’s life ahead of a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, during which he was shot in the ear. U.S. officials later said there was no evidence to link Iran to that attempted assassination.
In November, the Justice Department announced it had thwarted an Iranian plot to kill Trump ahead of the presidential election. It was claimed that Iranian officials tasked Farhad Shakeri, a 51-year-old suspected Iranian government asset, with surveilling and ultimately killing Trump. Shakeri is still at large in Iran. Iranian officials have denied the claims, and foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei suggested the reports were fabricated by Israel-linked factions to complicate U.S.-Iran relations.
The investigation into the assassination plot revealed that Shakeri, an Afghan national living in Iran, had been instructed by a contact within Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to make the planning of Trump’s surveillance and assassination a priority. That instruction was given last September, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.
In a related move, Trump recently withdrew government security protection for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his top aide Brian Hook and former national security adviser John Bolton, all of whom have faced threats from Iran due to their hardline policies during the Trump administration.
