President Donald Trump said he has left instructions for a massive military response against Iran if Tehran manages to kill him, a warning he delivered while dismissing a recent report about a fresh assassination plot tied to the country.
Trump spoke to the New York Post on Friday and said Iran has wanted him dead for years and would face retaliation on a scale it has not seen before if any plot against him ever worked. He pushed back on the idea that Israel had uncovered a new plan targeting him, even as he stood by his longstanding claim that Iran’s intent toward him has never wavered.
“No, no. Israel came up with nothing. No, no,” Trump said. “I’ve been No. 1 [on Iran’s kill list] for a long time, and it’s the way life is, you know.”
He then added, “I hope you’ll miss me.”
CNN later reported that intelligence Israel passed to the United States did not describe a formal assassination plot. Instead, the intelligence contained unspecified information suggesting that Ahmad Vahidi, a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, wanted Trump dead, according to the New York Post’s account of the CNN report.
Trump’s comments landed as tensions between Washington and Tehran escalated sharply. He recently walked away from a ceasefire with Iran and an early-stage memorandum of understanding after Iran allegedly struck three ships in the Strait of Hormuz earlier in the week. The United States responded by revoking a sanctions waiver tied to Iranian oil and launching close to 200 strikes across Iran over a two-day span.
Iran has said publicly that it wants revenge against Trump since 2020, when he ordered the strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, a senior Iranian military commander. Multiple attempts to assassinate Trump have been stopped since he survived a shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, the New York Post reported.
Anti-Trump sentiment in Iran has grown more intense in recent days. Demonstrators at memorial gatherings have carried banners calling for his death, according to the New York Post. Iranian media cited by the newspaper quoted a eulogist at one gathering asking, “Why shouldn’t we kill the one who killed my imam and my leader? Trump’s killing is our duty. Why is the most despicable man in the world still alive?”
Trump made similar comments in 2025, when he said he had given orders to destroy Iran if he were assassinated. The New York Post noted that his latest remarks carried more force than before, coming as threats against him have picked up again.
Trump repeated his claim about being Iran’s top target while speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara earlier in the week. He also took aim at the country’s leadership during those remarks.
“They had leaders, they’re gone. Then they had another set of leaders, they’re gone. Now they have another set of leaders, they may be gone, who knows?” Trump said. “And you know what? I may be gone too. Because I’m their No. 1 target, it’s out all over the place. Because they’re scum.”
He continued, “That’s the way they act and that’s the way they’ve done it for 47 years.”
Trump switched aircraft on his way back from Ankara this week. The White House described the switch as a security precaution taken after Trump publicly said Iran continued to pursue his assassination.
The exchange in Ankara came against a backdrop of a military campaign that has expanded quickly since the Strait of Hormuz incident. The nearly 200 strikes carried out over two days marked a sharp jump in the scale of US action against Iran, following the collapse of the ceasefire and the memorandum both sides had been working toward before the attack on the three ships. US officials have said Washington wants Iran to commit to ending its attacks in the strait, a waterway that carries a large share of the world’s seaborne oil traffic and has repeatedly been a flashpoint between the two countries.
Trump’s account of what Israeli intelligence showed differs from the version CNN reported. Where Trump described the reports of a plot as unfounded, CNN’s sourcing pointed to intelligence about a specific IRGC commander’s alleged wish to see him killed, without describing that intelligence as evidence of an organized plan. The distinction matters for how the threat is being assessed inside the US government, even as Trump’s public message stayed focused on the broader, years-long pattern he says Iran has followed.
That pattern, as Trump described it in Ankara, includes a succession of Iranian leaders he said have been removed one after another, a reference to the toll Israeli and US strikes have taken on the country’s senior military and political figures during the recent conflict. His comment that he “may be gone too” was delivered in the same breath as his claim to be Iran’s top target, a claim he has repeated regularly since ordering the Soleimani strike in January 2020.
That strike, carried out by a US drone near Baghdad’s airport, killed the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and prompted Iran’s government to vow retaliation against Trump personally. Tehran has repeated that vow at intervals in the years since, and Trump has cited it as the basis for his security posture whenever the subject comes up.
The Butler, Pennsylvania, rally shooting in July 2024 added a separate layer to the security discussion around Trump, one not directly tied to Iran. The New York Post’s report treated the plots allegedly linked to Iran as a distinct thread from that shooting, describing both as part of a broader run of threats against Trump that have been disrupted since he returned to the campaign trail and then to office.
Trump’s remark to the Post, “I hope you’ll miss me,” came across as characteristically informal for a statement about his own possible assassination, a tone he has used before when discussing threats against him. He paired that remark with the more pointed warning about the scale of retaliation Iran would face, without detailing what form a military response would take beyond calling it massive and unprecedented.
The White House has not released additional detail on what instructions Trump says he has left or with whom. The New York Post’s report did not specify which officials or agencies had been briefed on the plan, and the newspaper’s account relied on Trump’s own description of the arrangement rather than confirmation from a second source inside the administration.
Iran’s government has not issued a direct response to Trump’s latest comments as of the New York Post’s report. The eulogist’s remarks at the memorial gathering, relayed through Iranian media, reflected sentiment among some demonstrators rather than an official statement from Tehran.
The standoff over the Strait of Hormuz remains unresolved. US officials have continued to press Iran to commit to halting attacks in the waterway, even as the two countries’ broader diplomatic track, including the ceasefire and memorandum Trump abandoned, remains stalled. Trump’s comments in Ankara and to the New York Post suggest he intends to keep linking that unresolved military standoff to his own personal safety in public remarks going forward.
