President Donald Trump told allies at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday that Iran wants to kill him, and acknowledged, with striking matter-of-factness, that his luck may not hold forever. The remarks came as hardline Iranian lawmakers called for missiles to be fired at his location, and just days before the two-year anniversary of the assassination attempt that nearly ended his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
"I'm on every single one of their lists, and so far I guess I've been a little bit lucky, but that maybe doesn't last very long, because that's the way it goes," Trump said, as reported by the Daily Mail.
It was not bluster. It was not a throwaway line at a rally. The president of the United States stood at a NATO summit, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top cabinet officials, and spoke plainly about his own mortality at the hands of a hostile regime. The backdrop made the words heavier: Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had just been killed in the broader conflict, and the regime's funeral procession in Tehran featured an effigy of Trump being hanged near the front of the march.
The Iranian regime has made no effort to disguise its intentions. On Sunday, pro-regime demonstrators in Tehran held posters featuring crosshairs over Trump's face during public mourning for Khamenei. Mourners placed what has been described as a death bounty on Trump. On Monday, at Khamenei's funeral, crowds chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" while lighting American and British flags on fire.
Posters at the funeral also placed the faces of Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over crosshairs, accompanied by the phrase "There will be blood."
Hardline Iranian lawmakers went further, calling for missiles to be fired at Trump's location at the summit itself. The specific lawmakers and the forum in which the threat was issued have not been publicly identified, but the call was open enough to reach Western reporting.
Trump, for his part, did not flinch. At his press conference, he addressed Iran's post-Khamenei leadership with characteristic directness.
"They're gone 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. It's out all over the place. I'm the number one, because they're scum."
Iran's desire to kill Trump traces directly to his 2020 order to take out Revolutionary Guard General Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike. That decision removed the architect of Iran's regional proxy wars and earned Trump a permanent place on Tehran's target list. The regime has never forgiven it, and has never stopped acting on its grievance.
U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned during Trump's 2024 presidential campaign that Iran was actively plotting to assassinate him and former officials from his first term. Those warnings were not hypothetical. Federal prosecutors charged a Revolutionary Guard operative with offering $300,000 to have Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, murdered on American soil. The operative's identity and the case's outcome remain unclear from public reporting.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and one-time Iran envoy Brian Hook were both forced to live under round-the-clock government protection because of Iranian threats. These were not abstract intelligence assessments. They were operational security responses to active plots against American officials, plots that continued long after those officials left government.
The broader conflict has only escalated. Trump declared his ceasefire with Iran "over" after Iranian attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and he ordered fresh strikes on Iran in response. The president's willingness to speak openly about the threat while simultaneously ordering military action reflects a posture that treats the danger as real, not as a talking point.
Trump's remarks in Ankara land just days before the two-year anniversary of the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where gunman Thomas Crooks opened fire on the president from a nearby rooftop. Trump survived. Crooks was shot at the scene.
A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report released last week laid bare the catastrophic failures that nearly cost Trump his life that day. The Secret Service missed 102 radio calls flagging Crooks on a nearby roof with a long gun. One hundred and two. The agency never warned the agents at Trump's side to get him off the stage.
That number alone should end careers. The fact that Trump is still standing, still making public appearances at international summits, still absorbing threats from a hostile state, owes more to fortune than to the competence of the people charged with protecting him. When King Charles addressed Congress and condemned the assassination attempt on Trump, it was a reminder that even foreign heads of state recognized the gravity of what happened in Butler. The question is whether America's own security apparatus has caught up.
The IG report did not describe an agency that had a bad day. It described an agency that failed at the most basic function of its mission: listening to its own people when they screamed that a man with a rifle was on a rooftop near the president.
The convergence of foreign assassination plots and domestic security lapses creates a picture that should trouble every American regardless of party. Iran has placed a bounty on the president. Iranian lawmakers have called for missile strikes at his location. A Revolutionary Guard operative was charged with trying to pay $300,000 to murder a former Trump advisor. And the agency responsible for keeping the president alive missed over a hundred warnings about a gunman on a rooftop.
This is not a political argument. It is a security reality. The president of the United States is operating under credible, persistent, and escalating threats from a state actor that has already demonstrated its willingness to target American officials on American soil.
Elevated security concerns are not limited to the president himself. Earlier this year, prosecutors alleged that a man took a selfie with weapons before rushing the White House Correspondents' Dinner, a reminder that threats to senior officials and the political class extend well beyond any single adversary.
Trump's candor at the NATO summit was striking not because it was dramatic, but because it was plain. He did not inflate the threat for political effect. He stated it as fact, acknowledged his own vulnerability, and moved on to the business of the summit. "That's the way it goes" is not the language of a man seeking sympathy. It is the language of a man who has accepted the terms of the job.
Several questions remain open. Which Iranian lawmakers called for missile strikes, and through what official channel? What is the precise nature and amount of the death bounty placed on Trump at Khamenei's funeral, and was it a formal government action or a demonstrator gesture? What is the current status of U.S. strikes on Iran? And what, if anything, has the Secret Service done since the IG report to ensure that 102 missed radio calls never happens again?
The political class in Washington has spent years debating abstractions about threats to democracy. Here is a concrete one: a foreign government openly calling for the death of an American president, with a documented track record of trying to make it happen, while the agency charged with stopping it has proven it can miss a hundred warnings in a row.
Trump said he's been lucky. A serious country wouldn't leave it at luck.
