Israel shared intelligence with the United States warning that Iran had hatched a new plot to assassinate President Donald Trump, according to a Wall Street Journal report that surfaced as Trump attended the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. The president addressed the threat directly with reporters on Wednesday, acknowledging the danger with characteristic bluntness.
"I'm on every list," Trump told reporters in Ankara.
The intelligence Israel provided reportedly caught U.S. officials off guard. The New York Post reported that the specific threat was not being tracked by American officials before Israel's warning arrived earlier in the week and had not yet been vetted. Neither the White House, Israeli officials, nor Iranian officials have publicly confirmed the details described in the Journal's reporting.
Iran has denied previous allegations that it sought to assassinate Trump. But the denials ring hollow against a growing body of evidence, court filings, military operations, and intelligence intercepts, that tells a very different story.
This is not the first time Iran has been linked to plots against the president's life. The U.S. Justice Department in 2024 charged an individual accused of working with Iran in connection with an alleged murder-for-hire scheme targeting Trump before he returned to the White House. The details of that charge, including the defendant's name, were not specified in the Journal's account.
But other federal cases have filled in the picture. Farhad Shakeri, a 51-year-old Afghan national who described himself as an Iranian asset, told federal agents that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps directed him to surveil and assassinate Trump in mid-to-late September 2024, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Iran had already spent "a significant sum of money" on efforts to kill Trump and was willing to spend more, Shakeri told investigators. He faces charges including murder-for-hire, conspiracy, money laundering, and material support for a foreign terrorist organization, carrying up to 100 years combined. Shakeri remains at large in Iran, and a pre-trial discovery conference has been scheduled.
Separately, Pakistani national Asif Merchant is currently on trial in Brooklyn, having pleaded not guilty to charges related to an Iranian-backed assassination plot against the president, Just The News reported.
Threats against political leaders in the United States have extended beyond foreign plots. An FAA contractor was charged with threatening to kill Trump after using a government computer to search assassination-related topics, a reminder that the threat environment is both foreign and domestic.
The roots of Iran's campaign against Trump trace back to January 2020, when a U.S. strike killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran's elite Quds Force. Soleimani had orchestrated proxy wars and terrorist operations across the Middle East for decades. His death was a strategic blow to Tehran's regional ambitions, and, by all available evidence, it turned Trump into a permanent target of the regime's revenge apparatus.
Trump told reporters in Ankara that he believes Iran's leadership wants him eliminated "because of his actions against the regime." He also stated that his top priority in dealing with Iran remains preventing the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a goal that has driven the broader confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
Sen. Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican, framed the stakes in direct terms. "Iran is a terrorist regime. They've killed more than 1,000 Americans. The Ayatollah's attempt to assassinate President Trump is a reminder of why they must never have a nuclear weapon," Cotton said, as reported by the Free Beacon.
The security failures surrounding past assassination attempts on Trump have raised persistent questions about whether the protective apparatus around the president has been adequate to the threat level he faces.
The U.S. has not limited its response to courtrooms. The military operation known as Operation Epic Fury struck over 2,000 targets in Iran and eliminated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Breitbart reported. As part of that campaign, the U.S. and Israel killed Rahman Mokadam, identified as the head of the IRGC's special operations division and the alleged mastermind behind the Trump assassination plot.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed at a Pentagon briefing that those behind the Iranian plot against Trump were placed on the military's target list during Operation Epic Fury.
"The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh," Hegseth said.
Trump himself responded with characteristic directness: "They tried twice. Well, I got him first." On another occasion, referencing the death of Khamenei, the president said, "I got him before he got me."
The scope of the military response, over 2,000 strikes, the elimination of Iran's supreme leader, the destruction of IRGC command structures, would seem to make any further assassination plotting by Tehran an act of extraordinary recklessness. And yet, if the Journal's reporting and Israel's intelligence are accurate, Iran has hatched yet another plot.
The new intelligence warning arrived during a week when Trump was traveling internationally for the NATO summit. The New York Post reported that Trump switched Air Force One planes in Turkey as a strategic "distraction" to keep him safe amid the threat, an operational detail that underscores how seriously the Secret Service and military planners are treating the information.
Trump described the broader confrontation with Iran as ongoing. He told reporters that a previous ceasefire arrangement appeared to have broken down and warned Tehran of additional military action. The specific terms of that ceasefire, and between which parties it was negotiated, were not detailed in available reporting.
The federal court proceedings against accused Trump assassination suspects continue to wind through the justice system, adding a legal dimension to what is fundamentally a national security crisis. Shakeri remains beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement in Iran. Merchant faces trial in Brooklyn. And now, a fresh intelligence warning suggests the regime has not abandoned its objective.
Tucker Carlson put the policy question plainly: "If it's true that Iran is trying to murder Trump, we need to move militarily against Iran immediately."
Many of the critical details remain unknown. What is the specific mechanism of the alleged new plot? Which officials on both sides were involved in the intelligence exchange? Has the information been vetted and corroborated by U.S. agencies? And what, precisely, does the administration plan to do about it? These are questions the White House has not publicly answered.
The broader pattern of political violence targeting conservative figures makes the stakes impossible to dismiss. When a foreign adversary repeatedly funds, plans, and directs assassination operations against a sitting American president, the only serious question is whether the response has been forceful enough.
A regime that keeps putting the president of the United States on a kill list after losing its supreme leader, its top military planner, and 2,000 strategic targets has not been deterred. It has been enraged. And that distinction matters.