President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he remains a target for assassination by Iran as he concluded a whirlwind day at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Ankara with his ceasefire deal with Tehran in shambles and oil prices spiking across the globe.
Trump was recounting to reporters how the U.S. and Israel had killed off most of Tehran’s senior leadership during the opening days of the war he started five months ago when he mused aloud about whether he might end up sharing their fate at the hands of his country’s enemies.
“They had leaders, they’re gone, and they had another set of leaders, they’re gone. Now they have another set of leaders, they may be gone. Who knows? And you know what, I may be gone too, because I’m their No. 1 target,” he said.
“I’m the No. 1, because they’re scum. That’s the way they act, and that’s the way they’ve done it for 47 years, but I’m doing what’s right for the country,” he added.
The president’s comments on his status as a target for assassination came just moments after he described Iran’s current leadership as “a little loco” and “a little crazy” in the same breath in which he said that his negotiating team had been “dealing with great people” on the Iranian side during the talks which led to the ceasefire deal he appears to have abandoned.
Even as he described Iranian leaders as “crazy” he also suggested that the current group in charge of things in Tehran is “a little more rational” than the former senior leaders who were killed in airstrikes months ago.
“Level one is gone, level two is gone. This is level three. I think they are more rational,” he said before he contradicted himself and said the remaining leaders might not be acting rationally based on “their actions over the last week or two,” referring to Iran’s attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz which have now led to renewed airstrikes by the U.S. and new threats from Trump to escalate the war once again.
Iranian leaders have had designs on assassinating Trump and other former senior members of his prior administration since late 2019, when he ordered the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike.
During his 2024 campaign for the presidency, Trump travelled to events on an unmarked private jet belonging to his friend and future peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, rather than fly on his eponymously-branded Boeing 757 nicknamed “Trump Force One.”
At the time, Secret Service and intelligence officials feared that Iran had U.S.-based operatives with access to man-portable surface-to-air missiles.
Other former Trump advisers, including his ex-national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, spent years under Secret Service protection because of threats stemming from their involvement in the Soleimani killing. But Trump ordered their protection withdrawn when he returned to power because both men had criticized him during his time out of the White House.
In March, a federal jury in New York convicted Asif Merchant on murder-for-hire and terrorism charges related to his participation in an Iranian-led plot to assassinate Trump during the 2024 election season.
According to a Department of Justice press release announcing the conviction, Merchant admitted that the IRGC had arranged for his travel to the U.S. for the purpose of arranging Trump’s assassination.
Trump was also the target of two separate assassination attempts that year. The first came in July 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman fired a rifle shot that came within fractions of an inch of killing the then-former president.
Weeks later, Secret Service agents arrested Ryan Routh after discovering him hiding near Trump’s West Palm Beach, Florida golf club with a rifle as Trump played nearby. A jury in Florida convicted Routh of multiple federal charges after a trial last September. He was sentenced to life in prison this past February.
The president was also the target of a failed assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington this past April.
Asked about his reasons for mentioning the possibility of his being assassinated, Trump commented that the presidency is “a very dangerous profession” and said he did not care about the risk of death because he was “doing [his] job.”
“I don’t really care, because I’m doing my job, and I’m doing it. I hope better than anybody’s ever done it, because we have a country that’s hot and really, really successful,” he said.
Trump also noted that he’s “No. 1” on another list — a ranking of TikTok accounts.
“I like being No. 1 on TikTok better,” he said. “But I’m No. 1 on the list for killing.”
