Former President Donald Trump called for swift revenge in a hypothetical Iranian attack on him, years after he enflamed tensions in the region in an assassination that a UN official called extrajudicial.
Responding to Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran “brazenly threatened to assassinate” him, Trump wished “that America obliterates Iran” if he were assassinated.
The claim, stemming from Secret Service reports that Iran may have plotted against Trump, was made by the Israeli Prime Minister on Wednesday.
“Iran’s regime has been fighting America from the moment it came to power,” Netanyahu said in his congressional address. “As we recently learned, they even brazenly threatened to assassinate President Trump,” he added.
Netanyahu, who falsely claimed that Iran paid to organize pro-Palestinian demonstrations within the United States during the address, garnered cheers for the name-drop, hours before he is set to meet with the former president.
Trump, who in 2020 ordered the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, ran with Netanyahu’s claim of the Iranian plot, wishing for revenge were they to assassinate him.
“If they do 'assassinate President Trump,' which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “If that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered 'gutless' cowards!”
Trump’s revenge promise in case of a hypothetical strike on his life comes weeks after a real attempt on his life, one with ties not to Iran but to a 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident who espoused conservative, pro-Trump views in the past.
Though Secret Service protection on Trump was boosted following reports of an Iranian plot against Trump, that plan had no connection to Thomas Matthew Crooks’s shooting.
