“I may be gone too, because I’m their No. 1 target.” President Donald Trump said it on Wednesday, in Ankara, at the end of a long day at the NATO summit. His ceasefire with Tehran was falling apart and oil prices were jumping around the world.
He had been telling reporters how the U.S. and Israel killed most of Iran’s senior leadership early in the war, which he started about five months ago. “They had leaders, they’re gone, and they had another set of leaders, they’re gone,” he said. “Now they have another set of leaders, they may be gone. Who knows?”
His explanation for the risk was blunt. “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.”
Mixed signals on Iran’s leaders
Moments earlier Trump had called Iran’s current leadership “a little loco” and “a little crazy,” while saying his negotiators had been “dealing with great people.” He also said the present group was “a little more rational” than the ones killed. “Level one is gone, level two is gone. This is level three,” he said. Then he partly took it back, pointing to Iran’s attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz over the past week or two. Those attacks have brought renewed U.S. airstrikes and fresh threats from Trump to escalate.
Asked why he raised the subject at all, Trump called the presidency “a very dangerous profession” and said he did not care about the risk because he was “doing my job.” He added a joke. He is also No. 1 on 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.”
“I’ve left instructions”
Two days later he told the New York Post what would follow if Iran succeeded. “I’ve left instructions, if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before.” He had said much the same in February 2025, when he signed an executive order on “maximum pressure” and warned Iran “would be obliterated.”
Trump brushed aside reports that Israel had identified a new Iranian plot. “Israel came up with nothing,” he told the paper. “I’ve been No. 1 for a long time, and it’s the way life is, you know. I hope you’ll miss me.”
At a press conference, a reporter asked why journalists had been told to close their window blinds on Air Force One during the return trip. Trump said, “Because you’re probably on a dangerous flight.” Asked about any credible Iranian threat to the plane, he answered: “I have a threat all the time. I’m No. 1 on their list, before you. But if I go, you go.”
The record behind the claim
Iranian leaders have wanted Trump dead since late 2019, when he ordered the drone strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qassem Soleimani. Calls for his death have grown during the war, which has killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei among other officials.
Federal prosecutors have brought cases. In March, a federal jury in New York convicted Asif Merchant of murder-for-hire and terrorism charges over an Iranian-led plot to kill Trump during the 2024 election season. According to a Justice Department release, Merchant admitted the IRGC arranged his travel to the U.S. to set up the assassination. A criminal complaint in Manhattan said Farhad Shakeri, an Iranian operative, was told to focus on surveilling and ultimately killing Trump.
Two separate attempts on Trump in 2024 were not linked to Iran. A gunman fired a shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July that came within a fraction of an inch of killing him. Weeks later Secret Service agents arrested Ryan Routh near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club, where he was hiding with a rifle. Routh was sentenced to life in prison in February. Trump was also the target of a failed attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April.
Tehran rejects the accusation. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told NBC News that Iran “never attempted” to kill Trump “and we never will,” calling the allegations a scheme by Israel and others to promote Iranophobia.
Sources
- Trump tells the world Iran ‘scum’ want to assassinate him: ‘I’m the No. 1 target’
- Trump has ‘left instructions’ if he’s assassinated by Iran, he reveals
