- Iran threatened US President Trump on state TV, referencing his 2024 assassination attempt
- Trump was shot at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13, 2024, but survived with minor injuries
- The threat follows Iran protests and Trump's warnings of possible US military intervention
Iran issued a chilling threat against US President Donald Trump on Wednesday. A warning aired on Iranian state-run TV, which played clips of Trump's 2024 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and stated, “This time it [bullet] will not miss the target,” AFP reported.
On July 13, 2024, a gunman shot Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing his ear. After the attack, the Republican leader got off the stage bloodied and pumping his fist.
The threat comes in the backdrop of protests in Iran, and Trump has threatened to intervene militarily several times since the movement that has shaken the country began in late December. The protests are the largest since the Islamic Republic was proclaimed in 1979.
Trump had repeatedly talked in recent days about coming to the aid of the Iranian people over the crackdown on protests that rights groups say has left at least 3,428 people dead. The US had also threatened military action if authorities carry out the death penalty against people arrested during protests.
On Wednesday, Trump said that he has been told by “very important sources on the other side” that the killings by the Iranian government's crackdown on the protests were subsiding and that there were no plans for executions.
Previous Assassination Threats
However, this is not the first time Iran has threatened to kill Trump. In 2021, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's office posted a photomontage of Trump playing golf under the shadow of a warplane alongside a pledge to avenge a deadly 2020 drone strike he ordered.
The post warned there was no escape from payback for the US strike outside Baghdad airport, which killed Iran's storied foreign operations chief, General Qasem Soleimani, and his Iraqi lieutenant.
"Revenge is inevitable. Soleimani's killer and the man who gave the orders must face vengeance," it said.
In 2022, the US charged a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with plotting to assassinate John Bolton, who had served as National Security Advisor to Trump.
In February last year, Trump said that he told his advisers to ‘obliterate' Iran if they are successful in killing him. “I've left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won't be anything left,” he said.
(With inputs from agencies)
