Many will recall that President Donald Trump signed a wide-ranging executive order targeting Iran in February 2025, warning then that he had left orders for the country to be “obliterated” if he were ever assassinated. “I’ve left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated; there won’t be anything left,” Trump said at the signing.
More than a year later, as the United States is engaged in open conflict with Iran, that warning has been answered with a reciprocal threat — and Tehran’s long-running effort to target Trump has become more urgent.
On March 10, 2026, as U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran escalated, Iran’s top national security official issued what many analysts described as the most explicit public threat against a sitting U.S. president in recent memory. Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a senior figure in the clerical leadership, threatened President Trump with assassination in a post on X, writing: “The freedom-loving nation of Iran is not afraid of your hollow threats. Even those who were mightier than you have failed to destroy the Iranian nation. Watch yourself — or you’ll be eliminated.”
The warning followed a Truth Social post from Trump saying Iran would be hit “TWENTY TIMES HARDER” if it disrupted oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz. Larijani’s message, released by the Supreme National Security Council, also referenced the recent death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Trump downplayed the warning in a CBS News interview, saying he “couldn’t care less.”
After Khamenei was killed on February 28 — the first day of the joint U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran — Larijani had also vowed on national television to hold Trump personally responsible for the supreme leader’s death.
As Iran issued new threats, U.S. forces were simultaneously targeting the networks Iran used to threaten Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the leader of the Iranian unit behind a prior assassination attempt on Trump was killed in U.S. strikes, declaring, “Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”
On March 2, Trump commented on the killing: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first,” tying the alleged assassination plots to the larger U.S. operations against Iranian leadership.
Hegseth did not name the individual, but Israeli reporter Amit Segal identified him on X as Rahman Mokadam, reported to lead the IRGC’s special operations division.
Larijani’s public threat arrived days after a major U.S. legal development. Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national alleged to have been trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was convicted in a plot to assassinate Trump. U.S. security officials had warned the Trump campaign that Iran was actively targeting him and that multiple suspected operatives were believed to be operating inside the U.S.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi said of the verdict: “This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement.” FBI Director Kash Patel added that the case was not Iran’s first attempt to target Americans on U.S. soil.
Court records revealed the breadth of Iran’s reach. An undercover video presented in a Brooklyn courtroom showed an alleged Iran-linked operative describing the 2024 plot, placing a vape pen on a napkin to represent his target and asking: “This is the target. How will it die?”
The threats against Trump date back to January 2020, when Trump ordered a drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force. Iranian leaders have repeatedly vowed revenge for Soleimani’s death and have named Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as targets.
Trump’s security detail has treated these threats seriously for years. After a second assassination attempt on Trump in Florida in 2024 — not linked to Iran — his protection team was so worried about the Iran threat that he attended an event on a decoy plane owned by Steve Witkoff.
The Justice Department has documented multiple alleged Iranian plots against Trump and other former administration officials over time, including a 2022 scheme targeting former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Trump’s earlier “obliterate” warning — given as a deterrent more than a year ago — now looks less hypothetical and more like a course of action already unfolding.