President Donald Trump told world leaders at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday that Iran has placed him at the top of its assassination target list, and that his luck may not hold forever.
The remarks, delivered first to fellow heads of state and then repeated at a press conference flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior cabinet officials, came days before the two-year anniversary of the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally where a gunman nearly killed him. They arrived against a backdrop of open death threats from Iranian officials and mourners at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, held Monday in Tehran.
Trump did not mince words. He told the assembled leaders that Iran's regime has made eliminating him a priority, and acknowledged, in unusually personal terms, that the threat may eventually succeed.
Speaking to world leaders, Trump said plainly:
"They [Iran] want to take out the US leader, me. I'm on every list."
He continued in the same address:
"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."
At the subsequent press conference, Trump returned to the subject with even sharper language, referencing Iran's leadership turnover after Khamenei's death:
"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."
These were not offhand comments. Trump chose to raise the subject twice in a single day, in two separate settings, before the world's most powerful military alliance.
The president's warnings were not abstract. At Khamenei's funeral in Tehran on Monday, pro-regime demonstrators displayed posters with crosshairs superimposed over Trump's face. The same posters targeted JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, bearing the phrase "There will be blood." Mourners chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." A death bounty was placed on Trump during the funeral proceedings, though the specific amount and the individuals behind it were not detailed.
Hardline Iranian lawmakers in Tehran went further still, openly calling for missiles to be fired at Trump's location at the NATO summit. No names of the specific lawmakers were provided.
Iran's hostility toward Trump traces to a single event: his 2020 order to kill Revolutionary Guard General Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike. The regime has never forgiven it, and has never stopped plotting retaliation.
The threats are not rhetorical. Federal prosecutors charged a Revolutionary Guard operative with offering $300,000 to have former national security advisor John Bolton murdered on American soil. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and one-time Iran envoy Brian Hook were both placed under round-the-clock government protection because of credible Iranian threats against their lives.
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. The pattern is documented, persistent, and lethal in intent.
Trump's reflections on his mortality at the NATO summit land differently when measured against what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. Thomas Crooks opened fire at a Trump rally, coming within inches of killing the president. Crooks was shot at the scene.
A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report released last week revealed the scope of the Secret Service's failure that day. The agency missed 102 radio calls flagging Crooks on a nearby roof with a long gun. Not one of those calls resulted in agents warning the protective detail at Trump's side to get him off the stage.
One hundred and two calls. All missed. The president stayed exposed.
That report, arriving just days before the two-year anniversary of the Butler shooting, adds a grim factual foundation to Trump's public musings about his safety. When the president tells NATO allies that his luck "maybe doesn't last very long," he is speaking from experience that no other sitting American president shares.
The assassination threats are unfolding alongside a broader military confrontation. Trump declared his ceasefire with Iran "over" and unleashed fresh strikes after Iranian attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The specific dates and details of those vessel attacks were not publicly outlined, but the escalation was clear enough to prompt Trump's renewed military action.
Iran now operates under new leadership following Khamenei's death. Trump acknowledged that uncertainty at the press conference, noting the regime's leaders "may be gone", while adding, with characteristic directness, that the same could be true of him.
Consider what is publicly known. A foreign government has placed a bounty on the sitting president of the United States. Its lawmakers have called for missile strikes on his physical location. Its intelligence operatives have been charged with plotting assassinations of American officials on American soil. Its funeral processions feature crosshair posters targeting the president, the vice president, and the defense secretary by name.
And the agency responsible for protecting the president missed 102 radio warnings the last time someone tried to kill him.
Trump's willingness to speak about these threats publicly, to name them, to refuse to sanitize them, stands in contrast to the instinct of most political leaders to project invulnerability. Whether that candor reflects confidence, fatalism, or strategic messaging to allies and adversaries alike, the underlying facts are not in dispute. Iran wants him dead. It has said so openly. It has acted on similar intentions before.
The question is not whether the threat is real. The question is whether the institutions charged with stopping it are up to the task, a question the DHS Inspector General's report answered with devastating clarity.
When a president tells the world he may not survive the threats against him, and the record shows the people guarding him missed 102 warnings the last time, the problem is not the president's candor. It is everything else.
