President Donald Trump told the New York Post that he has been a target on Iran's assassination list for a long time and that he has already given his own answer to the threat. Trump said he is dealing with the danger as a fact of life and that he has instructed his team that if anything happens to him, the response should be a bombing campaign at a scale Iran has never experienced.
The comments come as tension between Washington and Tehran has sharply escalated in recent days. Trump declared this week that the ceasefire with Iran was effectively finished, and the two sides traded fresh strikes even as diplomatic channels stayed open behind the scenes. CNN and the Wall Street Journal both reported that Israel passed the United States new intelligence describing a specific, recently devised Iranian plan to kill the president, a warning that came on top of what officials described as a steady drumbeat of intelligence over recent weeks about possible attempts on his life. Trump has separately told reporters he considers himself Iran's top target.
Iranian officials have vowed retaliation against Trump for years over the 2020 killing of Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani, and the threats intensified further after the recent death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, when mourners at his funeral chanted for Trump's assassination. Trump has previously said publicly, including after signing an executive order reinstating sanctions on Iran, that he left instructions for Iran to be "obliterated" should any assassination attempt succeed.
