American President Donald Trump has acknowledged for the first time a personal aspect of his decision to attack Iran. He cited this country’s attempts to assassinate him in 2024 as a factor in ordering the joint American-Israeli operation that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
„I got him before he got me. I got him first,” Trump said about eliminating Khamenei in an interview given Sunday night to ABC News.
Trump had not previously addressed how Iran's threats to his life influenced his thinking about the United States' entry into the Middle East war.
These threats, along with the assassination attempts in July and September 2024, dominated his and his advisors' experience in the fall 2024 campaign, marked by repeated security measures and emergencies, such as changing planes and car routes, writes The Washington Post.
Trump Accused, Iran Denied
Iran's desire to kill Trump dates back to the American airstrike that killed General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. Federal prosecutors have cited two alleged Iranian assassination plots. However, no evidence has linked Iran to the two assassination attempts against Trump in 2024.
The American President suggested he sees a connection, stating to ABC: "They tried twice."
The White House has not provided evidence to support a connection.
Interviewed by CNN, the Iranian Foreign Minister emphasized that his country only resorts to legal methods to bring to justice those responsible for the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq by an American drone during the Trump administration.
"There are a million reasons to eliminate terrorists like Ayatollah Khamenei. His assassination plots against President Trump are just one reason," said a senior American official quoted anonymously in the newspaper.
Trump's Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, presented Iran's interest in killing Trump as part of a behavioral pattern that justified the US attack.
"He is responsible for a series of unprovoked armed attacks against the United States and Israel, violations of the UN Charter, and threats to peace and international security in the Middle East. He even attempted to assassinate the US President, President Trump," Waltz said Saturday at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
What Trump Said About Attacking Iran
Trump and his administration have not publicly presented detailed arguments for the attack on Iran. The subject only took up three out of the 108 minutes of his State of the Nation speech last week. Over the weekend, the US President released two videos, and on Monday, he spoke on the topic for about six minutes without answering questions.
In this latest instance, Trump listed four objectives of attacking Iran:
- destroying Iran's missile capabilities;
- destroying the Iranian navy;
- annihilating Tehran's nuclear ambitions;
- destroying Iran's ability to sponsor terrorism.
In previous statements, Trump spoke more extensively about regime change and freeing the Iranian people.
Assassination Attempts and Iran
National security officials warned Trump's campaign team that Iran wanted to kill him - before he was injured at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. The assailant, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed on the spot, and investigators did not establish a clear motive.
At a press conference on threats in September 2024, American officials informed Trump's campaign team that Iran had multiple assassination teams inside the US.
Trump repeatedly asked if Iran was behind the armed attack in Butler, and investigators said they could not rule out this hypothesis, according to individuals familiar with the press conference.
59-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, the alleged golfer assassin of Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida, represented himself in court and was sentenced to life in prison last month.
Last week, the trial of a Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, who was arrested in July 2024 and accused of attempting to hire planned assassins to kill politicians, including Donald Trump, began.
Last month, a man from Brooklyn was sentenced to 15 years in prison for planning to assassinate an Iranian dissident, working for an Iranian whom prosecutors said was planning Trump's assassination.
And on February 22, Secret Service announced that an armed man was shot dead after entering the secured perimeter of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. The President and his wife were at the White House at the time.
Iranian officials publicly vowed revenge against American leaders, including Trump and his former advisors Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. The government continued to provide security details for Pompeo and Bolton throughout the Biden administration until Trump revoked this right, according to the American daily.