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Reports that Israel has shared intelligence with the United States about a new Iranian plot to kill President Donald Trump have raised renewed questions about an ongoing years-long assassination threat against him.

Iran has openly pledged to retaliate against Trump for the 2020 assassination he ordered of Qassem Soleimani , a general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and these calls have been amplified since the start of the Iran War .

Amid fears of a return to all-out war between Iran and the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday of a “fresh” plot to kill Trump, citing people familiar with the matter. CNN also reported that Israel shared intelligence with the U.S. about a new plan devised by Tehran to assassinate Trump.

The details of the plot were not immediately clear, and CNN reported that the U.S. had neither vetted it nor tracked it before the Israeli warning.

While the purported plots are shrouded in mystery, Arie Perliger, an expert in terrorism, political violence, extremism, and Middle East politics, said that Iranian efforts at assassinations on U.S. soil typically involve outsourcing intermediaries.

Newsweek has contacted the White House and the Israeli foreign ministry for comment.

Previous Iran-Related Threats

The reports by CNN and the Journal did not give details of the assassination plans nor whether they might be like other plots uncovered by U.S. authorities linked to Iran.

In an indictment that was unsealed in November 2024, the U.S. Justice Department accused the IRGC of asking an Afghan national, Farhad Shakeri, to assassinate Trump, ideally before the election he won. If this were not possible, the IRGC would wait until after the election, as it believed Trump would lose to then-Vice President Kamala Harris, and thus, with less Secret Service protection, would be more vulnerable.

In another case, Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national whom U.S. authorities said was linked to the IRGC, was accused of coming to the U.S. to recruit hitmen to assassinate American political figures, including Trump.

Merchant began working for the IRGC in Pakistan in late 2022 or early 2023 and was arrested in July 2024 after meeting undercover FBI operatives he believed were contract killers. On March 6, he was convicted of murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism.

“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump,” said then Attorney General Pamela Bondi. ”Instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement.”

Perliger, professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, School of Criminology and Justice Studies, said that Iran’s efforts on U.S. soil have followed a consistent template exemplified by Merchant.

Rather than deploying its own trained operatives for the attack itself, Tehran outsources, sending intermediaries to recruit local criminal networks or hired guns, which provides deniability but also creates repeated points of failure, Perliger told Newsweek .

Among these failures were that Merchant's "hitmen" were undercover FBI agents, and the 2022 Iranian plot against former national security advisor John Bolton and the Shakeri case in 2024 collapsed.

“The important question about the current intelligence is whether Iran, now in an active shooting war with the U.S., has abandoned that cautious, deniable approach in favor of something more direct,” Perliger told Newsweek .

“If so, that would represent a meaningful escalation in both intent and risk tolerance, though not necessarily in capability.”

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are high after a resumption in hostilities this week in which the U.S. struck targets in the Islamic Republic after Tehran had launched attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Mourners at the funeral for slain Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called for the assassination of Trump with a banner that said, “We Will Kill Trump” and others held signs calling for his death.

Meanwhile, calls from Iranian officials have been growing for retribution for the strikes ordered by the U.S. president.

Kieran Doyle, North America Research Manager at analysis firm Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), said Iran has a history of planning and carrying out attacks on U.S. soil, and has the motivation to target Trump but without access to the information of American and Israeli intelligence agencies, it's difficult to say if this particular threat is credible.

“There's certainly no shortage of anti-U.S. and anti-Trump sentiment in Iran, which has been underscored by Khamenei's funeral processions, but whether the regime sees it as beneficial to assassinate Trump is a trickier question," he told Newsweek . “Whether the regime sees this as the best strategic move is unclear, however, and it's also unclear how Israel's position in the war might play a role in shaping what they've reportedly shared with the United States.”

Trump Muses About Threats

Trump faced two widely recognized assassination attempts in 2024. On July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks fired at Trump during a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, wounding the president in the right ear, killing one attendee, and seriously injuring two others. Crooks, whose motive remains unknown, was shot and killed by Secret Service snipers.

On September 15, 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh was discovered with a rifle outside Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh fled but was arrested shortly after. He said he wanted to prevent Trump from winning the election, and he was given a life sentence for the attempted assassination and related violent and firearms offenses.

Aside from those domestic incidents, Trump has also spoken of being a target for Iran, saying on Wednesday as he returned from the NATO summit in Ankara, "They want to take out the U.S. leader – me,” adding, “I'm on every single one of their lists."

One source told CNN the latest assassination plot warning came this week; another said there has been "a steady drumbeat" of intelligence in recent weeks about such plans, "but the warning from Israel was new and concerned a specific plot.”

Trump had used his old Air Force One plane to leave Ankara, sending his new Qatari-gifted jet on ahead to the U.K., where he switched planes for the journey to Washington. This surprise switch sparked speculation that the new jet’s security features were lacking amid growing tensions in the Middle East, where the U.S. launched fresh strikes against Iran, which borders Turkey.

Perliger said that usually state-sponsored plots are top-down, patient, and resourced, but they generate a signals footprint, such as communications, money transfers, and recruitment approaches that U.S. intelligence is well positioned to intercept.

"Domestic threats, such as Butler or the Routh case, tend to be bottom-up lone actors with idiosyncratic grievances, minimal planning signatures, and no network to infiltrate," said Perliger. "The irony is that the less sophisticated domestic actors have come far closer to succeeding, precisely because they are harder to detect in advance."

In February 2025, Trump told reporters that he had left instructions if Iran assassinated him, saying, “If they do it, they get obliterated. There won't be anything left."

He made the remark after signing an executive order upon taking office, giving him tools to engage with Iran’s government and apply maximum pressure on Tehran.

In January 2026, Trump told NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich that if he were assassinated and if “anything ever happens...the whole country’s going to get blown up.”

In September 2024, while on the presidential campaign trail, Trump was briefed about Iran’s alleged assassination threats by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in retaliation for the killing of Soleimani during Trump’s first term.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, said in a statement at the time that “continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months, and law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure President Trump is protected.”

Perliger said that for a sitting president facing a foreign-state threat, the Secret Service shifts from a primarily physical-protection posture to an intelligence-driven one.

There is deep integration with the FBI, CIA, and NSA on threat streams, expanded counter-surveillance and counter-drone coverage, counter-sniper teams, hardened and randomized travel, and shrinking the president's outdoor exposure, he added.

"Former presidents receive lifetime protection at a scaled-down level, but a credible state threat triggers augmentation, as we saw when Trump's detail was reinforced in 2024 before he returned to office."

Doyle said previous failed attacks definitely point to a credible willingness by Iran to carry out attacks on U.S. soil but ACLED analysis since the start of the Iran war, there have been many more attacks related to Tehran, its proxies, or pro-Iran groups in Europe, than in the U.S.

“On the other hand, it's very likely that assassinating the U.S. president would trigger a full-scale U.S. military response and possibly the involvement of more Western allies in the war,” Doyle said. “For this reason, the regime might see a serious attempt to assassinate Trump as too risky or as a poor overall tradeoff, though its exact view of the situation is likely tinged with a variety of other considerations.”

Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Frances Mao and Gray R. Thomas .

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