President Donald Trump for the first time acknowledged that the 2024 assassination attempts against him influenced his decision to attack Iran, citing the country’s alleged efforts to kill him as a key factor in ordering the joint U.S.-Israeli operation that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Trump’s Personal Security Concerns

During an interview with ABC News on Sunday night, Trump said, ‘I got him before he got me. I got him first.’ This marked the first time he publicly linked the assassination attempts to his decision to take military action against Iran. The two incidents, which occurred in July and September 2024, were described by Trump and his advisers as having dominated their experience during the fall 2024 campaign, with repeated security scares and emergency measures such as changing planes and motorcade routes.

The Iranian desire to kill Trump dates back to the U.S. airstrike that killed General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. Federal prosecutors have charged two cases of alleged Iranian murder-for-hire schemes, but no evidence has connected Iran with the two assassination attempts against Trump in 2024.

Trump suggested he sees a connection, telling ABC, ‘They tried twice.’ However, the White House did not provide evidence to support a connection between the assassination attempts and the attack on Iran.

Administration Justifies Attack on Iran

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, ‘There are a million reasons to eliminate terrorists like Ayatollah Khamenei. His plots to assassinate President Trump are just one reason.’

Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, portrayed Iran’s interest in killing Trump as part of a pattern of behavior that justified the U.S. attack. ‘It is responsible for a series of unprovoked armed attacks against the United States and Israel, violations of the UN charter, and threats to international peace and security across the Middle East,’ Waltz said Saturday at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. ‘It has even attempted to assassinate the U.S. president, President Trump.’

National security officials had warned Trump’s campaign that Iran wanted to kill him before he was injured at a July 13, 2024, rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed at the scene, and investigators have not established a clear motive. At a briefing on the threats in September 2024, U.S. officials told the Trump campaign that Iran had multiple kill teams inside the country.

Trump repeatedly asked whether Iran was behind the Butler shooting, and investigators said they could not rule it out, according to people familiar with the briefing. The would-be assassin at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, 59-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, represented himself at trial and was sentenced last month to life in prison.

Legal and Investigative Developments

A trial began last week for a Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, arrested in July 2024 and accused of trying to hire hit men to kill a political figure. Last month, a Brooklyn man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for planning to murder an Iranian dissident, working for an Iranian who prosecutors said was plotting to assassinate Trump.

Iranian officials publicly vowed revenge against American leaders, including Trump and former advisers Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. The government continued providing security details for Pompeo and Bolton throughout the Biden administration, until Trump withdrew them.

Trump and his administration have not extensively presented a public case for the attack on Iran. The subject occupied three of 108 minutes of his State of the Union address last week, and he released two videos over the weekend and spoke on the subject for about six minutes on Monday, without taking questions.

On Monday, Trump listed four objectives: destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, navy, nuclear ambitions, and ability to sponsor terrorism. In earlier remarks, he spoke more broadly of overthrowing the regime and freeing the Iranian people.