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The Biden administration alerted the Secret Service of an unspecified threat to Donald Trump by Iran before the assassination attempt on the former president Saturday, though the shooting in Pennsylvania was believed to be unrelated to any Iranian effort, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
U.S. intelligence officials have long warned that Iran may seek to avenge the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by a U.S. drone in Baghdad in 2020 at the direction of Trump.
After providing the warning, the Secret Service surged resources and assets for the protection of Trump, said a national security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security decisions. Whatever adjustments may have been made to the security detail, however, did not prevent 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from ascending a rooftop near a Trump rally and firing at the former president.
U.S. law enforcement officials have not identified ties between the shooter and any accomplice or co-conspirator, foreign or domestic, said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson. The relaying of the Iranian threat was first reported by CNN.
"As we have said many times, we have been tracking Iranian threats against former Trump administration officials for years, dating back to the last administration," Watson said in a statement. "These threats arise from Iran's desire to seek revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani. We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority."
U.S. and other Western security officials have raised alarms for more than two years about Iranian plots to harm current and former U.S. government officials, as well as against Iranian political activists living outside the country. Iran's intelligence and security services rely largely on proxies to carry out their plans, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to jewel thieves, drug dealers and other criminals in murder-for-hire schemes, according to officials who have investigated the plots.
That hands-off approach probably caused some operations to fail, the officials said. A number of plots have been disrupted and, in some cases, the hired hit men appear to have gotten cold feet and never carried out their orders.
The intelligence community's February 2024 Annual Threat Assessment noted that Iran "seeks to target former and current U.S. officials as retaliation for the killing of" Soleimani.
In 2022, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Christine Abizaid, noted that Iran has publicly threatened to conduct lethal operations against Trump and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and "has recently increased its threats of lethal action in the homeland."
Watson said that as part of the response to Iran's alleged threats, the United States "invested extraordinary resources in developing additional information about these threats, disrupting individuals involved in these threats, enhancing the protective arrangements of potential targets of these threats, engaging with foreign partners, and directly warning Iran."
U.S. security officials are also constituently in touch with the security details of former Trump officials to share "evolving threat information," she said.
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