Iran is out to kill Trump

If Iran’s regime survives, they’ll hunt the US president as they did Salman Rushdie and Tehran’s death sentence could be realised.

Ayatollah Khamenei has reiterated that ‘Death to America’ means ‘Death to Trump’.

Tehran can’t stop. Not a day goes by in which Iranian religious or political officials don’t threaten the life of President Trump. As long as the regime lives, so will the threat.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made clear 40 years ago that when Iranian mobs chant “Death to America,” it means they want to kill the president. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, restated the point: “ ‘Death to America’ means death to Trump.” Mr Trump constitutes a unique threat to the mullahs because he has actually used American military might to punish the regime for its behaviour.

Last week Mohammad-Javad Larijani, a former senior adviser to Mr Khamenei said, “Trump has done something” — attacking Iran’s nuclear site— “so that he can no longer sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago.” Mr Larijani mused about a “small drone” hitting Mr Trump “in the navel” as he enjoyed the Florida summer weather.

Iran’s clerical establishment provides religious justification for Mr Trump’s assassination. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a Khamenei appointee and Friday prayer leader in Tehran, took to the lectern earlier this month to proclaim that both Mr Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should face execution. Tehran is even offering a bounty. A website reportedly created by a regime insider claims to have raised $40 million for the effort.

Threats against Mr Trump began in his first term and ramped up after he authorised the 2020 drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, architect of Iran’s regional terror strategy. In response, Iranian officials authorised an arrest warrant, placed a bounty on Mr Trump’s head, and threatened to take deadly revenge against the president and his national security team.

Contrary to recent denials by Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, these threats and plots are real. Books about the president’s time in office and on the campaign trail detail the precautions Mr Trump had to take. authorities have been tracking, uncovering and, where possible, prosecuting people involved. The feds have disrupted several Iranian plots to assassinate Mr Trump on soil.

The threats proliferated following the 12-day war between Iran and Israel. Leading Shiite clerics tied to the regime branded Mr Trump with labels such as mohareb (one who wars against God), mahdur al-damm (one whose blood must be spilled), mufsid fil-arz (corruptor of the earth) and kafir harbi (warring infidel). Under Islamic law each of these terms invites violence against the offender.

After Mr Trump mocked Mr Khamenei on Truth Social on June 27 and bragged about sparing his life, Grand Ayatollahs Nasser Makarem Shirazi and Hossein Noori Hamedani issued a fatwa condemning Mr Trump as a mohareb who merits execution. Their fatwa echoes the chilling decree by Mr Khomeini against British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie in the late 1980s. Mr Rushdie has had to live under protection for decades and nearly lost his life in a 2022 stabbing attack.

Clerics who train the next generation of Islamic Republic theologians at the Tehran Seminary released a statement labelling Mr Trump a mahdur al-damm, indicating that his life is forfeit and his blood can be shed without legal consequence. Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, a member of the regime’s Orwellian-sounding Assembly of Experts and Expediency Discernment Council, broadened the scope of these fatwas. Mr Trump’s “property and life” he said “are permissible targets, and the lives of those dependent on the American government are also permissible targets.”

For cleric Hojjat al-Eslam Amin Assadpour, enslaving Mr Trump’s female family members is also halal (permissible), implied by his announcement that Mr Trump is a kafir harbi. Mr Araki asserted the fatwas apply to anyone supporting Mr Trump or his military actions. As one Iranian parliamentarian recently hailed, “when we get our hands on Trump, we will eliminate and destroy him.”

Iran’s state-linked clerical establishment has intensified the existing threats against the president’s life from the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. Should Mr Khamenei and his clerics outlast or outlive the Trump administration, the fate that befell Mr Rushdie may befall Mr Trump, and Tehran’s warrant of death will follow him.

Mr Taleblu is a senior director of the Iran program and Mr Ghasseminejad is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

The Wall St Journal