U.S. officials have warned more than a half dozen former national security officials from the Trump administration that Iran’s assassination threats against them are serious and will likely never go away as long as the Islamic regime is in place.
The threats, including the ones against former President Donald Trump, stem from the administration authorizing the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani in January 2021.
Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), was the powerful general in Iran. He was viewed as the second most powerful figure in the country behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was viewed by Khamenei like a son.
A new report from Politico revealed that the plots against the officials are “even more extensive and aggressive than previously reported,” according to interviews with a dozen officials about the threats.
“This is extraordinarily serious,” said Matt Olsen, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for national security. “Iran has made it very clear that they are determined to seek retaliation against former officials in connection with the Soleimani strike.”
The threat against Trump’s life is so serious that he has not played golf — his favorite pastime — in a month and will not do so until after the election because federal officials are not able to secure courses to the extent needed to guarantee his safety.
Trump’s motorcade is now being broken up at random times as a precaution and he has started traveling on “nondescript planes that do not have his name on the side instead of his longtime 757 jet.”
Trump is now requesting military assets to guard and transport him.
The Biden-Harris administration is facing significant pressure to provide security details to all who have received threats as some have been forced to spend exorbitant amounts of their own money to defend themselves and their families.
A former senior Trump administration said that the threats they are facing are “historic” as the U.S. has “never had former senior national security officials,” including cabinet members, face serious threats on their life from a foreign adversary.
Iran has relied on criminals, gangs, and drug cartels to carry out hits abroad.
At least seven former Trump officials receive 24/7 protection from the U.S. government, which can include up to six officers at a time.
Six of the seven are top former officials who were directly involved with the operation going after Soleimani, including Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense; Mark Milley, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Paul Nakasone, head of NSA and U.S. Cyber Command; Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command; Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State; and Brian Hook, the State Department’s Special Representative for Iran.
Several other former Trump administration officials have received serious threats, including former national security adviser John Bolton, who received government protection after Iran began soliciting hitmen to kill him, offering to pay $300,000.
One of the most alarming incidents involved former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who traveled to Paris in June 2022 to receive an award from the French government.
While there, the Secret Service detail assigned to him noticed he was being followed by two Muslims throughout the city. The final time that they were spotted, the two men did something that was so alarming that the agents grabbed O’Brien out of a meeting and rushed him back to his hotel room. No further details were given about what specifically happened.
Disgraced former Secret Service Director Kimbery Cheatle later stripped O’Brien of his security detail and told him that he would have to find his own, the report said. He has had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars protecting himself and his family.
The Pakistani national who was arrested in July for orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot on behalf of Iran “remotely scouted a Trump rally,” the report said.
While there is no indication that the two assassination attempts that Trump survived this year were connected to Iran, the FBI has not ruled out the possibility and likely will not say while the investigation is ongoing.
Other Trump officials who have been warned by the FBI that their life is in danger, and who are not receiving protection, include former national security officials Matt Pottinger, Victoria Coates, and Robert Greenway.
Pottinger warned that Americans who dismiss the threats because they hate Trump are foolish because “it could just as easily be the Biden guys.”
He said that he is concerned by the Biden-Harris administration’s extremely weak response to the threats because of the message that it sends to China, Russia, and other U.S. adversaries, which is that they should threaten specific U.S. officials in hopes of getting them to soften U.S. policy toward them.
“We don’t want national security officials who are chicken s***,” he said.
