Iran has wanted Trump dead since January 2020, and the evidence for that runs through federal courthouses, intelligence briefings, and a week of funeral processions in which crowds carried banners reading “Kill Trump” through the streets of Tehran and Mashhad.
Trump told the New York Post he has left instructions to bomb Iran “at levels that they’ve never seen before” should Tehran assassinate him. The statement landed in a week already saturated with threat and counter-threat: renewed US and Iranian strikes, a collapsed ceasefire, and the ongoing funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader killed when the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran in February.
The comments echoed Trump’s statement in February 2025, when he told reporters he had instructed advisers to obliterate Iran if Iranian leaders assassinated him. Friday’s interview was not an impulse. It was a repetition, made more explicitly now, in a more dangerous moment.
Why Iran’s Threat Is Not a Theoretical One
Iran has sought Trump’s assassination since he ordered the 2020 strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. The vow of revenge that followed has not faded. As crowds gathered in Mashhad for Khamenei’s burial, they chanted slogans demanding revenge on Trump for his killing. “I swear by the blood of the supreme leader, Trump, we will kill you!” they shouted, with women holding up placards reading “Kill Trump.”
In Tehran, mourners carried banners bearing slogans including “kill Trump” and “we will avenge,” while a performer addressing funeral prayers drew cheers from parts of the crowd after questioning why Trump was still alive.
In November 2024, the Justice Department disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official with planning the assassination. Investigators were told of the plan by Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who authorities say maintains a network of criminal associates enlisted by Tehran for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots.
Shakeri told the FBI that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him on October 7, 2024, to set aside other work and assemble a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan. Seven days. That detail, the deadline, the urgency, the casualness of it, is drawn directly from a federal criminal complaint.
The Justice Department said the plot was part of Iran’s efforts to exact revenge for the death of Soleimani during the Trump administration.
The Strategic Logic Behind Saying It Out Loud
US officials reported that new Israeli intelligence about an Iranian assassination plot could have been an attempt to influence Trump’s stance as he weighed whether to escalate military action against Iran. Israel has pushed for increased military intervention in the Middle East while Trump had opted for continuing negotiations, though on Friday he announced a fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran was “over.”
Into that environment, Trump made a deliberate choice, not just to leave instructions, but to announce publicly that he had done so. Deterrence isn’t a secret. It never has been. The entire logic of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War was built on the credibility of a threat the enemy believed would be carried out. A retaliatory threat you keep hidden offers no deterrent value at all.
If Iran’s leadership privately doubts whether the United States would respond decisively to a presidential assassination, that doubt is itself a danger. By making his intentions explicit, Trump removes the ambiguity that could embolden them.
The comments echoed Trump’s February 2025 statement, when he told reporters he had instructed advisers to obliterate Iran if Iranian leaders assassinated him. He said it then. He’s saying it now. The warning stays on the table, and the repetition is the point, it signals a policy, not a mood.
The Intelligence Backdrop
The interview came a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had shared intelligence about an Iranian assassination plot with the US president. Trump subsequently disputed that characterization.
“No, no, Israel came up with nothing,” Trump said, adding that he had been Iran’s primary target for “a long time.” That contradiction, denying the specific intelligence while affirming the broader threat, is worth parsing carefully. He’s not trying to manufacture a crisis or justify a preemptive strike. He’s not claiming a breaking emergency. He’s making a structural statement: regardless of what any particular piece of intelligence says in any given week, the standing orders are already clear.
Other American officials suggested the Israeli intelligence report could be an effort to sway Trump’s decision-making as he weighed whether to intensify American military action against Iran. Netanyahu’s government has pushed for increased military intervention in the Middle East, while Trump opted for continuing negotiations. The intelligence could be genuine, or it could be shaped by an ally with its own strategic interests. Trump’s decision to acknowledge the threat in general terms while dismissing the specific Israeli report suggests he understands that distinction.
The president’s departure from Turkey on an older Air Force One instead of the new model gifted by Qatar raised security concerns, while separately, Washington carried out retaliatory attacks against Iran in response to Tehran’s targeting of shipping vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, with the US striking 90 targets inside Iran. The security picture around Trump this week extended to which aircraft he boarded and what route he flew home.
The Strongest Objection
The pushback against what Trump said goes something like this: by personalizing the threat, by framing a US military response as retaliation for the assassination of one man rather than an act of national defense, he undermines the institutional character of American power. Presidents aren’t supposed to sound like mob bosses. Threats of overwhelming force should come from the United States government, not from a personal grievance list.
It would carry more weight if the threat from Iran were itself institutional and impersonal. But it isn’t. US federal authorities have been tracking Iranian threats against Trump and other administration officials for years, a situation that stems from Trump ordering the 2020 killing of General Qassem Soleimani, who had led the Quds Force. Iran named him. Iran targeted him. Iran sent an asset with a seven-day deadline to put together a plan to kill him.
Some argue that statements like this make diplomacy with Iran harder. On Thursday, a US official said diplomatic efforts with Iran were still underway behind the scenes, despite the resumption of strikes and Trump’s declaration that the ceasefire was “over.” Washington and Tehran were working toward reaching a nuclear deal by mid-August. So talks are still alive, and the bombing instructions are still on the table. Those two things can coexist.
What Staying Silent Would Have Cost
Trump’s remarks came days after he announced that the ceasefire with Iran was “over” because of the country’s attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. In that environment, a president who says nothing specific about the consequences of a presidential assassination sends a signal of his own: that the United States hasn’t thought it through, that there’s no plan, that there’s space to maneuver.
Trump’s approach tells a different story. The instructions exist. They’re written down. If he’s killed, the response is already decided. Footage from the Khamenei funeral processions showed massive crowds carrying giant banners reading “Kill Trump,” “Hey Trump, we will kill you,” and “There will be blood.” “We will kill Trump” banners also appeared on buildings in Mashhad.
None of this is abstract. It is funeral banners and criminal complaints and a sitting president who has every reason to believe he is genuinely being hunted. The instructions are not a reaction to one week’s intelligence briefing. They are a standing policy response to a multi-year campaign.
Read More: Why the Secret Service told Trump to fly on old Air Force One, not the new gift from Qatar
What to Do With All of This
The question of whether Trump was right to say this publicly is almost separate from whether the underlying posture is correct. The instructions themselves, the standing order to respond with devastating force if the president is assassinated by Iran, are, by most reasonable assessments of deterrence theory, exactly the right policy. Every administration should have one. The deterrence value is real. The message to adversaries is unambiguous.
The more complicated question is whether surfacing it bluntly, personally, in a newspaper interview, while simultaneously dismissing specific Israeli intelligence, is the sharpest possible way to deliver that message. Maybe not. But optimal isn’t the only standard that matters. Clear matters. Credible matters. And on both counts, saying it plainly, in language anyone can understand, is probably more effective than burying it in a classified annex that Tehran’s leadership may or may not take seriously.
Some of the biggest threats to a sitting president in modern history have been handled with whispers and diplomatic channels and carefully worded non-statements. Those approaches have their place. But the man at the center of this isn’t posturing about a hypothetical. He’s responding to a federal criminal complaint, to banners hung from hotel buildings in Mashhad with his face on them, to a week of funeral chants calling for his death.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.