Former President Donald Trump didn’t mince words Wednesday at a rally in North Carolina after being warned about ongoing Iranian efforts to assassinate him.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence met with Trump and his campaign on Tuesday, according to an ODNI spokesman. While the agency declined to discuss specifics, the former president’s campaign said the meeting involved “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”
During his rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina, Trump echoed that statement and sent a stark warning to Tehran about what he would do if he were president and a leading candidate was under threat.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens. We’re going to blow it to smithereens,” the former president said to cheers.
“There would be no more threats,” Trump continued. “But right now, we don’t have that leadership or the necessary people, the necessary leaders.
The FBI is still investigating the assassination attempt in July during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where one person was killed, and the apparent assassination attempt that took place earlier this month at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida.
Investigators have not publicly disclosed a motive in either of the cases.
Before the Butler shooting, the Secret Service increased Trump’s security due to intelligence indicating there was an Iranian threat to assassinate the former president, sources told ABC News.
Counter snipers were assigned to the Butler rally because of the increased threats from a foreign threat prior to the event, according to a report released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Trump suggested the two assassination attempts were tied to Iran during his rally Wednesday.
“There have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of, and they may or may not involve…Iran. But I don’t really know,” he said.
However, there is no indication that Iran was connected to the suspected shooter in the Butler incident, officials said.
Intelligence officials briefed senators about a range of foreign threats later Wednesday.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters before going into the meeting that the country needs to take the Iranian threats seriously.
“Iran has threatened to kill — if it’s accurate and I have no reason to think it isn’t — Iran has threatened to kill a former president of the United States and a current candidate for president of the United States,” he said. “We can’t just let it lie out there and pretend that the threat is not real.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said he was also concerned about threats from Iran.
“We know the Iranian regime is a regime that will resort to all kinds of tactics and we need to be on guard — just as the Russian regime has been saying in terms of undermining our support for Ukraine,” he said.
Senators from both parties leaving the briefing said they did not learn of any new threats but were still concerned about ones they’ve seen previously reported.
Despite the existing threats, senators said they left with general confidence in the national security apparatus’ ability to abate looming challenges.
“Actually, it seemed that the intelligence community and law enforcement folks had a pretty good handle on things, not that there isn’t a very persistent effort but that they seem to be managing it quite well,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, said.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., was similarly confident.
“I do believe that the national security apparatus is on top of this and monitoring it carefully. You never know what you don’t know entirely, but I do think there are systems in place that maximize the ability to influence things,” Van Hollen said.
But there remain existing challenges with monitoring misinformation on social media, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said.
“I think they’re doing a good job … protecting infrastructure. I think they’re doing a good job of detecting incoming threats. We don’t have a good mechanism for countering disinformation,” Kaine said.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the briefing was consistent with his current understanding of ongoing threats, which while “not encouraging” were also “not a five-alarm fire.”
“So, it’s not good. But I didn’t hear anything that hasn’t been publicly reported by all, and I didn’t hear anything that was like we had a huge imminent immediate problem,” he said.
Iran and Trump have had a long, contentious history, especially after the January 2020 strike ordered by the former president that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.
In the aftermath of Soleimani’s killing, Iranian officials vowed they would eventually exact revenge.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reiterated his country’s hatred toward Trump and the U.S. government during an interview in January with ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz.
“That was a big, big mistake made by Trump. That is not something that we will be able to forget,” Amir-Abdollahian said, adding that Tehran still wanted to see “all the people involved” in the strike “brought to justice.”
“What does that mean?” Raddatz asked. “Does that mean killed?”
“Justice will rule on it,” he responded.
