President Donald Trump said he’s given his advisers instructions to obliterate Iran if it assassinates him.
“If they did that they would be obliterated,” the US president said today in an exchange with reporters while signing an executive order calling for the government to impose maximum pressure on Tehran.
“I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.”
The Justice Department announced in federal charges in November that an Iranian plot to kill Trump before the presidential election had been thwarted.
The department alleged Iranian officials had instructed Farhad Shakeri, 51, in September to focus on surveilling and ultimately assassinating Trump. Shakeri is still at large in Iran.
Earlier this month, a close ally of Iran’s Supreme Leader appeared to call for Trump’s execution for his role in the killing of a top general.
Hossein Shariatmadari is a staunch supporter of Ali Khamenei and editor-in-chief of the Kayhan newspaper. In an article, the newspaper called for Trump to be punished for ordering the killing of Qasem Soleimani.
“Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani and is a criminal who must be punished,” they wrote. “Trump may only come to Iran to face punishment for ordering the killing of Soleimani.”
He added that the US President “deserved death” for the killing of Solemani.
Soleimani was the commander of the elite Quds Force, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps division. He was killed in a US drone strike ordered by Trump after arriving at Baghdad airport in Iraq on January 3rd, 2020.
