Trump says US would destroy Iran if Tehran assassinates him

Washington,UPDATED: Jul 11, 2026 22:36 IST

US President Donald Trump has said he has left standing orders for the American military to destroy Iran "at levels they've never seen before" if Tehran carries out what he described as long-standing threats to kill him. But under US law, there is no automatic, preauthorised mechanism that would trigger such retaliation the moment a president is assassinated.

If Trump were killed, power would pass immediately to Vice President JD Vance under the 25th Amendment and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, making him commander in chief and giving him the authority to decide any response. The issue has drawn fresh attention after Trump publicly referred to Iranian threats against him and reports emerged of what US officials see as credible plots.

Trump wrote on his social media platform on Saturday that Iran had made threats "to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate" him. He said 1,000 "missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat".

The White House did not immediately respond on Saturday to questions about what would happen to those military orders if Trump were killed.

Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said hours later that Iranians would continue to avenge the killing of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who died in the initial US and Israeli strikes that started the war in late February and was mourned in funeral events across Iran this week. In remarks aired on state television, he said, "We pledge to take revenge for the pure blood of you and all the martyrs of these two wars from the criminal and disgraceful killers," and added, "This revenge is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out." During the funeral events, mourners repeatedly held posters and banners calling for Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be killed.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Israel had alerted US officials to fresh Iranian plots to kill Trump. While the White House declined to comment, Trump appeared to refer to such threats during this week's NATO summit in Turkey, saying, "They want to take out the US leader - me." Sabrina Singh, a former deputy Pentagon press secretary in the Biden administration, said, "Iran wanting to target senior American leaders is something that we know is happening," and added, "You have to take these as credible threats."

Even so, experts said any US retaliation would almost certainly come through the sitting commander in chief rather than through an automatic system. Garrett M. Graff, author of Raven Rock: The Story of the US Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die, said, "The US has, for a whole variety of reasons, never utilized a technical dead man's switch." He said America has extensive continuity plans for a nuclear attack or another catastrophe that wipes out Washington, but those plans do not allow for immediate retaliatory strikes simply because a president has died.

Graff said Trump appears to be suggesting that he has left standing orders so that, if he were killed, "the Pentagon should proceed with standard launch protocols". But he added that there is "a lot of reason to doubt the legality of such standing orders, since in the event of a president's death, the nuclear launch authority would immediately pass to the vice president or designated successor - and ultimately it would be up to him or her to determine whether to proceed". He also said Trump could have privately told Vance something like, "If I'm killed, nuke Iran," and that such a direction would "make more sense and would be absolutely legal".

Trump's post referred only to firing missiles at Iran, which the US has done scores of times since its war with Iran began. He did not explicitly threaten the use of nuclear weapons. Graff noted that the US had, during decades of the Cold War, prepared detailed plans for nuclear launch authority to pass on in the event of a surprise attack, including airborne command posts with a general on board who could take over launch orders if Washington were lost.

Trump was targeted in two domestic assassination attempts during the 2024 presidential campaign and also saw a gunman storm the White House Correspondents' Association dinner he attended in April. This week, he flew part of the way back to Washington from Turkey on an older Air Force One aircraft rather than on a newer plane gifted by Qatar, raising fresh security questions about the newer jet. Images of that aircraft, retrofitted at an estimated cost of USD 400 million, show it does not have some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems as earlier versions.

The aircraft change came as the US and Iran again began trading strikes, putting last month's initial deal to end the war at risk. Asked about Iranian threats while travelling on Air Force One, Trump told reporters, "I'm No. 1 on their list."

Washington has often received credible threats against the president and other senior leaders from Iran and other foreign adversaries through national security channels, but Trump declaring publicly that he is a target is far less common. This is also not the first time the US has warned Iran over threats linked to Trump.

In 2022, the Biden administration warned Iran against attacking US citizens after the Justice Department said a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had plotted to assassinate John Bolton, Trump's first-term national security adviser. Bolton, now a Trump critic, last month pleaded guilty to illegally retaining classified documents in a case led by Trump's Justice Department. That year, President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, "should Iran attack any of our citizens, to include those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences."

Two years later, during Trump's campaign against Democrat Kamala Harris, the Biden administration again quietly warned Iran, making clear that an attack on Trump would be treated as an act of war. Taken together, Trump's remarks, the reported threats from Iran and the legal position in Washington underscore that any American response would rest not on an automatic order but on the decision of the next commander in chief.

With PTI Inputs

- Ends