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One thing was clear from President Donald Trump’s appearance at the NATO summit in recent days: He believes Iran wants him dead.
“I’m No. 1 on the kill list for Iran,” the president told reporters Wednesday. “I like being number one on TikTok better.”
Trump returned to the subject repeatedly throughout the summit — with a level of candidness that might seem unusual for any other president.
A new report suggests U.S. officials may have had fresh intelligence to support concerns about the threat: the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Israel recently shared intelligence with the United States indicating Iran had developed a new plan to assassinate Trump.
The report also adds new context to questions surrounding Trump’s decision to switch from the interim Air Force One to one of the legacy VC-25A aircraft during his return from the NATO summit. The White House has not said whether the reported intelligence played any role in that decision.
TRUMP EXPLAINS WHY HE’S FLYING OLD AIR FORCE ONE BACK TO DC
Trump flew to the summit in Turkey, which borders Iran, aboard the new Air Force One, a retrofitted Boeing 747 donated by Qatar, but switched to one of the older Boeing VC-25A aircraft that have served as Air Force One for more than three decades for the first leg of his trip home, from Ankara to Royal Air Force Mildenhall in the United Kingdom.
From the U.K. to the U.S., Trump switched back to the newer jet.
Bill Gage, a former Secret Service special agent who traveled on dozens of presidential and vice presidential foreign trips, told Fox News Digital he had “never seen a plane switch up” in the middle of an overseas visit.
Trump said the newer aircraft was instead flown ahead of him to Royal Air Force Mildenhall, UK, so U.S. troops could tour it.
“It could be that simple,” Gage said. “I just have never seen that in all my years.”
The president surmised in a press briefing Wednesday that Iran may want revenge for the U.S. killing its leadership.
TRUMP SAYS IRAN CEASEFIRE IS ‘OVER’ AFTER IRANIAN ATTACKS TRIGGER MASSIVE US RESPONSE
“They had leaders, they’re gone, and they had another set of leaders, they’re gone,” Trump said. “Now they have another set of leaders, they may be gone. Who knows? And you know what, I may be gone too, because I’m their number one target.”
The president was asked why twice he had alluded to Iran attempting to assassinate him.
“I speak about it a lot because the life of a president is very dangerous,” he said. “I don’t really care, because I’m doing my job, and I’m doing it, I hope better than anybody’s ever done it, because we have a country that’s hot and really, really successful … I like being No. 1 on TikTok better. But I’m No. 1 on the list for killing.”
The Iranian government did not return a request for comment on Trump’s assertion.
During Thursday’s funeral procession for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Mashhad, Iran, mourners carried banners reading “Hey Trump, we will kill you” and “We will kill Trump” while chanting revenge slogans against the U.S. president.
The mourners were not publicly linked to Iranian leadership.
But, “banners like that can only be put together and carried with the permission of the Iranian government,” Tom Warrick, a former Department of Homeland Security deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital.
Warrick said it would make sense for Iran to try to kill Trump after the U.S. killed Khamenei.
“The starting point is understanding Iran’s peculiar sense of symmetry. Anything that’s done to them, they try to do back at somebody,” Warrick told Fox News Digital. “Many of us expected there would be an Iranian attempt to kill President Trump, and they’re likely to persist in this.”
The summit aircraft change quickly fueled questions about whether the interim Air Force One had received the full suite of defensive upgrades carried by the legacy presidential aircraft.
Images of the jet and Air Force statements indicate that several complex modifications, including some missile detection and countermeasure systems, were intentionally left off the accelerated retrofitting.
Two aging Boeing VC-25A aircraft have served as Air Force One since 1990, while Boeing builds two new VC-25B aircraft to serve as Air Force One that originally were supposed to be completed in 2024. Now, that timeline has slipped to 2028 or 2029.
The U.S. spent $400 million upgrading the Qatari-donated jet to serve as Air Force One in the meantime.
The U.S. Air Force, which operates the presidential aircraft fleet, had previously said it prioritized certain modifications in order to bring the Qatari-donated Boeing 747 — known as the “Bridge” aircraft — into service on an accelerated timeline.
The Air Force said the rapid conversion was completed “without accepting any risk regarding security, safety, or secure communications,” but acknowledged that “several highly complex engineering modifications required for the final (Air Force One aircraft) were intentionally excluded from the Bridge aircraft.”
The Secret Service had recommended Trump use the older plane as a security precaution as hostilities fired up once again with Iran, The New York Times reported.
The White House declined to say whether the administration believes the threat to the president has changed following the latest escalation with Iran or whether the aircraft change was related to security concerns, but said the new Air Force One is secure.
“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff,” Steven Cheung, White House director of communications, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”
The FBI declined to comment on whether the Iranian threat level had changed and the Secret Service did not return a request for comment.
Gage cautioned that he had no firsthand knowledge of why the aircraft was changed, but said that if reporting that the Secret Service recommended the switch was accurate, “the Secret Service would not have just said that in a vacuum, out of the blue. There must have been some kind of intelligence that prompted them.”
Gage said the Secret Service, working with the broader intelligence community, likely has a dedicated team focused exclusively on monitoring threats from Iran directed at the president.
“There’s probably 20 or 30 people every day that are working on that, going through reams of HUMINT and OSINT and trying to find that diamond in the rough,” Gage said, referring to human intelligence and open source intelligence.
Trump’s comments came as a tenuous U.S.-Iran ceasefire unraveled.
The truce, formalized in a June memorandum of understanding brokered by Pakistan and other regional mediators, was intended to halt fighting for 60 days while the two sides negotiated a broader agreement. The deal called for Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and laid out a framework for future talks on sanctions relief and other issues.
But the agreement rapidly broke down after Iran attacked commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting renewed U.S. military action. U.S. Central Command launched a new round of strikes targeting Iranian military infrastructure tied to maritime operations and other military sites, while Trump declared the ceasefire “over” and warned of further action if Iran continued its attacks.
Questions about whether the threat had intensified gained new urgency Thursday after The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel recently shared intelligence with the United States indicating Iran had developed a fresh assassination plot targeting Trump. Trump repeatedly described himself during the NATO summit as Iran’s top target and said he faces “a threat all the time.”
Following the January 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iranian officials have repeatedly vowed revenge, and U.S. officials have long warned that Tehran has sought to target current and former American officials involved in the operation.
The U.S. government has publicly alleged multiple Iran-linked assassination plots targeting Trump.
Following the U.S. killing of Soleimani in 2020, Iranian officials repeatedly vowed revenge, prompting the U.S. government to provide additional security to Trump and several former administration officials involved in the operation. The government has long warned that Tehran has sought to target current and former American officials linked to the strike.
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In 2024, the Justice Department charged an alleged Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps asset with directing a plot to surveil and assassinate then-President-elect Trump, describing it as part of Iran’s broader campaign of retaliation.
Earlier that year, a Pakistani national with alleged ties to Iran was also charged in a separate murder-for-hire scheme. None of the domestic assassination attempts against Trump during the 2024 campaign have been publicly linked to Iran.
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