WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump said on Feb. 4 that the state of Iran will be annihilated if it assassinates him.
“It would be called total obliteration,” he told reporters in the Oval Office in response to a question about what would happen if Iran’s Islamic regime or its proxies kill him.
“And I can’t imagine they do that. It should have been stated by [President Joe] Biden,” he said.
Trump said he has “left instructions” for the United States to take out Iran if it acts to eliminate him.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we’re going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,” he said in a September speech.
Two other assassination attempts were made against Trump during the 2024 election cycle.
The first was in July at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump’s ear was grazed by a bullet. One rallygoer was killed and two others injured. The shooter was eliminated by a counter-sniper.
The second attempt occurred a couple of months later at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. A Secret Service agent spotted a man pointing a rifle through the perimeter fence as Trump was golfing with Steve Witkoff, who is now the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.
Trump’s latest remarks were made as he signed an executive order to reimpose a “maximum pressure” campaign on the Iranian regime that includes sanctions.
“It'd be great if we could have a Middle East and maybe a world at total peace.
“I mean, we’re going to see. They cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he said when asked if he would make a deal with Iran. “With me, It’s very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
