The Iranian regime's campaign to target Donald Trump for death hasn't stopped and won't stop because of any ceasefire deal or other agreement between the two nations.
Iran's fanatical desire to murder the president stems from vows of retaliation following the January 2020 U.S. airstrike that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. U.S. intelligence and the Department of Justice have tracked and disrupted multiple concrete operations, alongside broader institutionalized targeting.
Multiple news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, are reporting that Iran has concocted another plot to kill Donald Trump. The warning comes from Israeli intelligence, according to sources.
At least two other organized, verified plots to kill Trump have been disrupted by U.S. law enforcement, according to the Department of Justice.
In November 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed criminal charges detailing an active murder-for-hire plot directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
An IRGC official approached Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national and deported convict with an established criminal network inside the U.S. In mid-to-late September 2024, Shakeri was instructed to put aside other regional operations and focus strictly on formulating a plan to surveil and assassinate Trump within seven days. When Shakeri noted the cost and difficulty, the IRGC handler stated that money was no issue, but added that if a plan couldn't be executed before the election, they would pause the operation until afterward, calculating that Trump would lose and be easier to target.
In August 2024, federal prosecutors charged Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran, for his involvement in a separate federally disrupted murder-for-hire scheme. Merchant traveled to the United States to actively recruit hitmen, spotters, and criminal actors on behalf of Iranian interests. The network was meant to target high-profile U.S. political figures, explicitly including Trump, as a mechanism of state-sponsored revenge. Merchant was subsequently convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn.
The intelligence shared by Israel indicated that Iran has devised an updated, specific plan targeting Trump amid heightening geopolitical exchanges in the Strait of Hormuz.
A source told CNN that a warning from Israel had been delivered to the U.S. as recently as this week. The threat matrix has been shifting into what intelligence sources describe as a dedicated IRGC operational hunt unit (informally referred to in some intelligence circles as "Mukhtar" ["the selected"]).
Trump noted during the July 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara that intelligence briefings confirmed he remains ranked as the primary target on these lists.
“They want to take out the US leader — me,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning, I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long. These are evil, sick people. And we have to root out that cancer. That cancer. You know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early. And that’s the way I feel.”
At the funeral for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, mourners chanted for Trump's death and held up a banner that said, "We Will Kill Trump," according to the Journal.
Beyond the tactical operations, U.S. intelligence agencies maintain that Iran holds an institutionalized "kill list" of high-ranking Trump administration officials involved in the 2020 Soleimani decision.
Operatives like Shahram Poursafi were previously charged in 2022 for orchestrating a $300,000 bounty plot targeting former National Security Adviser John Bolton, alongside a parallel $1 million bounty targeting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The swirl of intel surrounding assassination attempts and plots on Trump makes it difficult to determine how serious most of them are. This specific threat is being taken very seriously despite the lack of detail.
Two sources familiar with recent US intelligence said that the intelligence community is tracking several actors who have discussed attacks but haven’t taken action, and one said that US intelligence agencies have been concerned that Iran would target a number of current and former senior officials. But that source said that the Israeli report is viewed — in part — as piece of a broader Israeli effort to influence Trump’s decision making on Iran. Some in the intelligence community are always skeptical of Israeli reporting, the source said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has voiced deep doubts toward Trump’s efforts at diplomacy with Iran, and he has clashed with Trump over Israeli military action in Lebanon, which had complicated the talks. The two men spoke by phone Thursday, and Netanyahu is expected to visit Washington soon for talks with the president.
The desire to kill Trump and the organized attempts to carry out that desire predate the institutional decapitation of the Iranian leadership initiated by Israel and the U.S. during the current conflict. Iran can hardly claim "retaliation" when they've been trying to kill Trump for the last six years.
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