“Big threats on my life by Iran.” Donald Trump put it that bluntly in a post around September 25, 2024, after his campaign said US intelligence officials had briefed him on a suspected Iranian plot to kill him. The bottom line: the campaign named a threat and an intelligence office confirmed the briefing, but the details stayed private.
Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said the briefing covered “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate” Trump, meant to “destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.” He added that the attacks had grown more coordinated and more frequent over the past few months. The campaign did not elaborate, and the BBC noted it was not clear whether the threats were new or had been reported before. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged the briefing but declined to discuss specifics. The Guardian reported that the office confirmed to it that the briefing took place.
Trump predicted more trouble. “Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again,” he wrote, and warned that an attack on a former president was a “Death Wish for the attacker!”
Not the shooter in Pennsylvania, not the man at the golf course
The plot in question appears separate from the two attempts on Trump’s life already on the record. On July 13, a lone gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, opened fire at a rally in Pennsylvania. Trump was wounded and one rally attendee was killed. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service agent, and investigators found no evidence he was part of a larger plot.
On September 15, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle poking through a fence at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach and opened fire. Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested nearby and charged with attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate. The BBC stressed there has been no suggestion Iran was involved in either case.
What Iran says, and what came before
Iran has denied plotting to kill Trump. Iranian officials called earlier allegations “malicious,” according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. The Iranian government did not immediately respond to the BBC’s request for comment this time.
Reports of a motive have circulated for some time. The Guardian said the Iranian motivation is believed to stem from revenge for the January 2020 US strike, ordered while Trump was president, that killed Maj Gen Qassim Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force. In 2022, the US charged a Revolutionary Guard member, Shahram Poursafi, with trying to arrange the murder of former national security adviser John Bolton, offering $300,000 to people in the US to carry it out.
The cyber side is documented too. Last week, US intelligence officials said Iranian hackers stole material from the Trump campaign and passed it to media outlets and to Joe Biden’s now-defunct campaign; all declined to publish it. A Microsoft analysis linked the hack to a group within the Revolutionary Guards. In August, federal prosecutors charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in an alleged murder plot against an unnamed US politician.
The briefing landed on the same Wednesday as a Senate report on the Pennsylvania shooting, which found a failure of leadership among the Secret Service team assigned to protect Trump.
Sources
- Trump campaign says US intelligence warned of Iran assassination threats – BBC News
- Donald Trump briefed on suspected Iranian assassination plot – The Guardian
