(WASHINGTON) — An Iranian plot to kill then-candidate Donald Trump was clearly on the president’s mind when he ordered the attack that killed Iran’s supreme leader.
“I got him before he got me,” Trump Sunday night, not long after he announced Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed. “They tried twice. Well, I got him first.”
President Trump was referring to an Iranian plot to kill him during the 2024 presidential campaign. During the summer of 2024, U.S. intelligence believed the Iranian government was plotting to kill then-candidate Trump.
The plot was not tied to the assassination attempts against the candidate in Butler, Pennsylvania, or West Palm Beach, Florida, but Trump was briefed on the threat and additional resources were added by the Biden administration to his Secret Service detail.
When I spoke with President Trump late Sunday night after he had returned to the White House from a weekend overseeing military operations in Iran from his club in Mar-a-Lago, he sounded like a president who is feeling invincible.
He said he believes the military operation has been an unmitigated success.
“Nobody else could have done this but me, and you know that,” Trump told me.
Trump told me the Iranians had made significant concessions in the last round of talks. He suggested his decision to cut off talks those and order the attack was driven in part by the success of the military operations to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, whom the U.S. said was an illegitimately elected president , and to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities last summer in coordination with Israel.
“A year ago, it would have been great to accept that deal for me,” he said on Sunday, “but we have become spoiled.”
Trump told me that someone in the Iranian government reached out to him, but he would not say who.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you,” he said. “One of the few remaining people who are still alive. He doesn’t report to the Supreme Leader anymore.”
Before the attacks, the administration had identified possible leaders of a post-Khamenei Iran, but Trump said they are all gone. Khamenei was killed on Saturday alongside around 40 senior Iranian officials, the Israel Defense Forces said.
“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump said. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”
When asked about his statement earlier in the day that there would be more American casualties.
“It’s war and you have casualties in war,” he said.
Trump marveled at the level of American losses so far, pointing to last summer’s attack and the operation against Maduro in Venezuela as evidence of his administration’s military precision.
“All the things we went through and we lost three people. We lost three,” he said. “But if you ask Iran how many they lost, they can’t count that high.”
U.S. Central Command on Monday said another member of the U.S. military had been killed during the operation against Iran, bringing the total known U.S. deaths to four people. At least 555 people have been killed in Iran in U.S.-Israeli strikes, the Iranian Red Crescent Society said in a statement on Monday.
When asked on Sunday how long the war would go on, Trump said, “We always thought it was a four-to-five-week deal.”
Was he prepared to go longer?
“Sure. We have a lot of ammunition,” he said. “It could also go less.”
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