President Donald Trump delved into the “instructions” he has left behind in case Iran assassinates him, and they sound like one of his furious Truth Social posts.
Trump, 80, spoke about his plans for posthumous revenge in an interview with The New York Post, as his war with Iran stretches into its fifth month and after he called a tenuous peace agreement “over” due to the resumption of hostilities.
“I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with,” Trump said, echoing comments he made this week in Ankara, Turkey, at a NATO summit.
“…The only thing is, I’ve left instructions—if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before,” he continued.
There have been Iran-linked threats to Trump dating back to at least 2020, when a U.S. drone strike killed one of the country’s top generals, Qasem Soleimani.
When Trump was in Turkey this week, according to CNN, Israeli intelligence informed U.S. officials of an Iranian plot to assassinate him. Trump hurriedly left the country on a different plane than the one he flew in on, telling reporters later that they were still on a “dangerous” flight “because of the sleazebags that we have to deal with.”
At least one version of Trump’s instructions to hit back in the event of his death in an Iranian attack has been around since shortly after he took office for a second time in January 2025.
“If they did that, they would be obliterated,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office then. “That would be the end. I’ve left instructions.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether any details in Trump’s instructions have changed since the war began.
Some of Trump’s social media posts about an elusive peace deal have been just as dramatic as his instructions to his successor.
In early April, he warned that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”—unless a deal was reached.
Chief negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, have been criticized for failing to bring an end to the conflict.
“They’re business guys. They have not been effective in Ukraine, not been effective in Gaza. They have not been effective in this,” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said this week. “They can’t have three portfolios to begin with. We have a State Department for a reason.”
The duo could continue trying to negotiate with Iran, Trump said, but it’s “just a waste of time dealing with them.”
