President Donald Trump issued a chilling warning to Iran if the Middle Eastern nation tried to assassinate him.
Trump signed an order in the Oval Office Tuesday that detailed a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, as he worked to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
The president said he was ‘torn’ when signing the order – which prompted the question why he was hesitant when Iranian leaders have threatened to assassinate Trump and his allies over the U.S. killing of Quds force leader Qasem Soleimani.
‘If they did that, they would be obliterated,’ Trump responded. ‘I have left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.’
When asked to clarify his comments, the president made the same threat.
‘That would be called total obliteration,’ Trump said. ‘I can’t imagine they would do that,’ he also commented.
Trump tore into President Joe Biden for not giving the same stern warning during the Democrat’s four years in office.
‘And Biden should have said that, but he never did. I don’t know why. Lack of intelligence perhaps? But he never said it,’ Trump complained.
President Donald Trump issued a chilling warning to Iran if they tried to assassinate him. ‘If they did that, they would be obliterated,’ Trump said from the Oval Office Tuesday
Trump had pulled the U.S. out of the Obama-era Iranian nuclear deal and then greenlit the assassination of Soleimani in Janauary 2020, when the Iranian military officer was at the Baghdad airport.
Since then, Trump and a number of U.S. officials working for him have been under Iranian assassination threat.
Biden, in the weeks ahead of the 2024 election, had National Security Council officials make it clear to Iran that any attempt on Trump’s life would be considered an act of war.
Trump used more graphic language, saying that if he were president he’d tell Iran it would be ‘blown to smithereens’ if U.S. officials were harmed.
‘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 are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,’ the Republican nominee said.
The president survived an assassination attempt in July at a Pennsylvania rally and an attempted assassination was arrested at his West Palm Beach golf club in September.
Two years before, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, had circulated an animated video of a drone firing on Trump at his golf course.
Trump said Tuesday that the U.S.’s chief aim continues to be to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei photographed last year. Iran has threatened to assassinate President Donald Trump and other top U.S. leaders over the January 2020 killing of Quds force leader Qasem Soleimani
‘They cannot have a nuclear weapon,’ Trump said in the Oval Office. ‘I think they’re close, they’re close. I think they’re too close.’
He said the order he was signing was ‘very tough’ on Iran but he’d rather work out a deal.
‘So I’m signing this and I’m unhappy to do it but I really have not so much choice because we have to be strong and firm and I hope that it’s not going to be used in any great measure at all,’ Trump said. ‘It’d be great if we could have a Middle East and maybe a world at total peace.’
Trump answered ‘I would’ when asked if he would meet with Iranian leaders.
Trump kicked off his retribution tour last month by pulling security details from some of those officials the intelligence community said were being targeted by Iran.
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton had his Secret Service detail pulled.
He became a Trump critic after leaving the administration and wrote a tell-all about his experience head of the 2020 election, which Trump lost.
Trump also killed off former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s security detail furnished by the State Department.
Pompeo decided against running against Trump in the 2024 GOP primary, but Trump allies still have criticized him for not being loyal enough to the now second-term president.
Both Bolton and Pompeo were under threat from Iran.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
