President Donald Trump said on July 11 that the U.S. military will launch attacks on Iran if the regime attempts to assassinate him. Trump’s comments come after calls for his death erupted at the funeral of slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Orders have already been given, and the U.S. Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one-year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran,” he wrote.
The warning came as Iran buried Khamenei on July 10, capping a week of funeral processions that drew a huge crowd to the country’s holiest shrine, some of whom carried banners that read, “We Will Kill Trump.”
Mojtaba has vowed to avenge his father’s death, writing in a July 10 post: “This vengeance is what our nation is demanding, and this must definitely be done.”
“I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with,” the president told The New York Post on July 10. “The only thing is, I’ve left instructions—if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before.”
The two nations have traded missile strikes over the past few days after the United States accused Iran of violating the ceasefire by attacking three ships in the Strait of Hormuz on July 7. The U.S. Department of the Treasury also revoked Iran's authorization to sell oil the same day.
The U.S. Central Command said on July 9 that it struck 90 Iranian military targets to degrade Iran's ability to attack commercial shipping and civilian mariners in the strait.
Iran has also launched a series of retaliatory attacks against nations across the Middle East. The Iranian military said it fired 10 missiles targeting a U.S. command center in Jordan on July 9, according to Iran’s semi-official news outlet Fars News.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on July 11 accused the United States of violating the interim deal after the revocation of Iran's authorization to sell oil, saying in a post on X that “Iran has so far kept its word.”