Former President Donald Trump addressed Iran’s plots to assassinate him during remarks in battleground-state North Carolina on Wednesday, saying it was “strange” how the Iranian president received such a large security detail when visiting the United Nations this week.
Trump was speaking about jobs in Mint Hill, just outside Charlotte, when he mentioned the potential Iranian plot to assassinate him.
“Meanwhile, we have the president of Iran in our country this week, we have large security forces guarding him, and yet they’re threatening our former president and the leading candidate to become the next president—certainly a strange set of circumstances,” Trump said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Tuesday.
Tehran’s potential assassination plot was detailed in FBI documents that Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, released earlier this month, showing other potential targets included President Biden, Nikki Haley, along with other “politicians, military people or bureaucrats.”
Trump said that if he were president, and a former president came under such a threat, he would tell the threatening country that if they did anything to harm the individual, “we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens.”
“But right now, we don’t have the leadership necessary to do that,” the former president said. “We have two people, not one, that only keep looking, and when you do that, trouble always ensues.”
Trump said that “we all need to pull together” to put an end to such threats and “bring back American Strength, Power, and Prestige,” which he suggested had diminished during the Biden presidency.
TRUMP BRIEFED ON ‘REAL AND SPECIFIC THREATS’ FROM IRAN TO ASSASSINATE HIM, CAMPAIGN SAYS
On Tuesday, the Trump campaign said the former president was briefed about “real and specific threats” from Iran to assassinate him.
Iran’s aim to assassinate Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, is part of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to “destabilize and sow chaos in the United States,” Trump Campaign Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a press release.
In addition to the assassination plot, the FBI further confirmed last week that Iranian hackers attempted to supply the Democratic presidential campaign with stolen communication files from the Trump campaign.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz and Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.
