Hours before launching B-2 bombers at Iran, President Donald Trump stood on a secured airport tarmac 40 miles west of Manhattan, under the watchful guard of the U.S. Secret Service and a militarized counterassault team. When a reporter asked about the risk of terror attacks on U.S. targets overseas by Iranian proxies, the world’s most protected man instead spoke of his own risk of assassination.
在伊朗发射B-2轰炸机之前的几个小时，唐纳德·特朗普总统站在曼哈顿以西40英里处的安全机场停机坪上，在美国特勤局的监视后卫和一支军事化的反攻击团队的陪同下。当一名记者询问伊朗代理人对美国海外目标的恐怖袭击的风险时，世界上最受保护的人谈到了自己的暗杀风险。
“You are even in danger talking to me right now. You know that?” he said. “So I should probably get out of here. But you guys are actually in danger. Can you believe it?” Before walking away, he looked a reporter in the eye. “Be careful,” he said.
“您现在甚至正与我交谈。你知道吗？”他说。“所以我可能应该离开这里。但是你们实际上处于危险之中。你相信吗？”走开之前，他看着记者。“要小心，”他说。
The threats against the president do not rank among the stated reasons for Trump’s decision to target nuclear sites in Iran, and White House officials and other outside advisers told us they have not come up in meaningful Situation Room discussions. “The president makes decisions on Iran based on what’s in the best interest of the country and the world, not himself,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told us.
对总统的威胁并不是特朗普决定针对伊朗核场地的既定原因，白宫官员和其他外部顾问告诉我们，他们没有参加有意义的情况室讨论。白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特（Karoline Leavitt）告诉我们：“总统根据国家和世界的最大利益而不是他本人对伊朗做出决定。”
But the fear of being killed at the behest of a foreign government has hung over the president and his senior team for months, an anxiety-producing din that has limited their daily routine, especially after two failed assassination attempts by alleged homegrown assailants. Now some Trump allies are privately wondering how much the ever-present risk is shaping the president’s thinking about the current conflict.
但是，害怕在外国政府的要求下被杀害的恐惧已经挂在总统和他的高级团队上数月了，这是一个焦虑的恐惧症，限制了他们的日常工作，尤其是在涉嫌本土袭击者的两次遇刺企图失败之后。现在，一些特朗普盟友私下想知道，永远存在的风险正在塑造总统对当前冲突的思考。
At least twice in 2024, federal authorities gave private briefings to campaign leaders on the evolving Iranian threat and adjusted Trump’s protection. The Justice Department revealed two indictments last year alone that described disrupted Iranian plots against U.S. officials. Top aides worried that Trump’s Boeing 757 campaign plane, emblazoned with his name, would be shot out of the sky, and at one point they used a decoy plane—sending alarmed (and presumably more expendable) staff off on “Trump Force One” while Trump himself flew separately on a friend’s private plane, according to a Trump-campaign book by the Axios reporter Alex Isenstadt.
至少在2024年至少两次，联邦当局向竞选领导人私人简报了伊朗不断发展的威胁并调整了特朗普的保护。司法部去年透露了两项起诉书，描述了伊朗对美国官员的破坏。高级助手担心，特朗普的757竞选飞机以他的名字命名，会被射出，有一次，他们使用了一架诱饵飞机 - 据Axios reporter reporter Alex isenStads Axios reporter Alex isenStads the Trump-campaign Books凭借Trump的私人私人飞机的说法，特朗普本人在一架朋友的私人飞机上，震惊（大概是更具消耗性的）员工，而特朗普本人则乘坐“特朗普武力一号”。
“Big threats on my life by Iran,” Trump posted on social media last September. “The entire U.S. Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again.”
特朗普去年9月在社交媒体上发布了“伊朗对我的生活的重大威胁。”“整个美国军方都在注视和等待。伊朗已经做出了行动，但他们会再次尝试。”
Since this week’s air strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, military and security analysts have been on guard for asymmetric responses, such as terrorist attacks and assassinations. The Department of Homeland Security warned of a “heightened threat environment” in a Sunday bulletin and noted Iran’s “long-standing commitment to target US Government officials.” FBI agents who had been reassigned to focus on immigration were told over the weekend to focus back on counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cyberissues, NBC News reported Tuesday.
自从本周在三个伊朗核场地上进行空中袭击以来，军事和安全分析师一直在警惕不对称的反应，例如恐怖袭击和暗杀。国土安全部在周日的公告中警告说，“威胁环境更高”，并指出伊朗“对以美国政府官员为目标的长期承诺”。NBC News周二报道，在周末被告知，被重新分配给移民的联邦调查局特工重新集中在反恐，反情报和网络主义者上。
Trump’s two-week window for diplomacy was a smoke screen
特朗普的为期两周的外交窗口是烟幕
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has denied his government’s involvement in any assassination plots. But he and other Iranian leaders have done little to ease concerns. “Iran reserves all options,” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, posted on X after the attack, before the country launched a missile barrage at a U.S. military base in Qatar that did little damage.
伊朗总统马苏德·佩兹希安（Masoud Pezeshkian）否认了他的政府参与任何暗杀地块。但是他和其他伊朗领导人几乎没有做任何缓解担忧。伊朗外交大臣阿巴斯·阿拉格奇（Abbas Araghchi）在袭击事件发生后在X上发布了“伊朗保留所有选择，”在该国在卡塔尔的一个美国军事基地发动了导弹弹幕，这对X尔的一场导弹弹age弹造成的损失很小。
“Threat equals intent plus capability,” Matthew Levitt, an expert on Iranian operations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told us. “We are very clear on their intent. We are less clear going forward on their capabilities.”
华盛顿近东政策研究所的伊朗运营专家马修·莱维特（Matthew Levitt）告诉我们：“威胁等于意图加上能力。”“我们非常清楚他们的意图。我们不太清楚他们的能力。”
Trump has publicly indicated that the focus of U.S. military action against Iran is narrowly tailored to its nuclear program. “We want no nuclear. But we destroyed the nuclear,” he said in the Netherlands on Wednesday.
特朗普公开表示，美国针对伊朗的军事行动的重点是针对其核计划量身定制的。他在荷兰周三在荷兰说：“我们不想要核。但是我们摧毁了核。”
The question of Iran’s assassination posture remains a sensitive one inside Trump’s circle—“very top of mind,” one person, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, told us. And close allies assume it must also be for the president. “It’d probably be in the back of my mind if I were him,” an outside White House adviser told us. During the run-up to the U.S. bombing of Iran, Tucker Carlson suggested in a debate with Texas Senator Ted Cruz that there needed to be an immediate attack on Iran if there was evidence of an assassination threat against Trump, even as he doubted the legitimacy of such reports. “We should have a nationwide dragnet on this, and we should attack Iran immediately if that’s true,” Carlson said.
在特朗普的圈子里，伊朗暗杀姿势的问题仍然是一个敏感的问题 - “非常头脑”，一个人要求匿名坦率地说话，他告诉我们。关闭盟友认为这也必须给总统。“如果我是他，那可能会在我的脑海中，”一位外部白宫顾问告诉我们。塔克·卡尔森（Tucker Carlson）在与德克萨斯州参议员泰德·克鲁兹（Ted Cruz）的辩论中提出，在伊朗爆炸案中，如果有证据表明对特朗普有暗杀威胁，即使他怀疑此类报告的合法性，就必须立即对伊朗发动袭击。卡尔森说：“我们应该在全国范围内有一个Dragnet，如果那是真的，我们应该立即攻击伊朗。”
Last year, then-President Joe Biden sent word to the Iranian regime that any assassination attempt against former U.S. officials would be considered an “act of war,” according to people briefed on the plans, who were not authorized to speak publicly. Pezeshkian told NBC News in January 2025 that “Iran has never attempted to, nor does it plan to, assassinate anyone.”
去年，当时的总统乔·拜登（Joe Biden）向伊朗政权发表了言论，任何对美国前官员的暗杀企图都将被视为“战争行为”，这是对计划的简报，他们无权公开讲话。佩兹希安（Pezeshkian）在2025年1月对NBC新闻说：“伊朗从未尝试过，也没有计划暗杀任何人。”
“At least as far as I know,” he continued, not entirely engendering confidence in the assessment.
“至少据我所知，”他继续说，并不完全对评估产生信心。
Trump, in his less diplomatic style, has repeated Biden’s warning, albeit in much more colorful language. He told reporters in the Oval Office in February that he had “left instructions” for what should happen if he is murdered by Iran. “If they do it, they get obliterated,” the president said. “There will be nothing left.”
特朗普以较少的外交风格重复了拜登的警告，尽管它的语言更加丰富多彩。他在2月在椭圆形办公室告诉记者，他有“离开指示”，因为如果他被伊朗谋杀了。总统说：“如果他们这样做，他们就会被淘汰。”“将一无所有。”
Such U.S. retaliation has a historical basis. When former President George H. W. Bush, his wife, and two sons survived an alleged car-bomb assassination attempt during a visit to Kuwait in 1993, U.S. investigators tied the plot—involving a Toyota Land Cruiser packed with plastic explosives—to Iraqi Intelligence Services. Months later, then-President Bill Clinton ordered retaliatory cruise-missile attacks on the intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. Nearly a decade later, President George W. Bush cited the foiled attack as part of his case for the U.S. military invasion of Iraq that toppled its president, Saddam Hussein. “There is no doubt he can’t stand us,” the younger Bush said of Hussein in 2002. “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad at one time.”
这种美国报复具有历史基础。1993年，前总统乔治·H·W·布什（George H. W.几个月后，当时的总统比尔·克林顿（Bill Clinton）下令对巴格达情报总部进行报复巡航袭击。将近十年后，总统乔治·W·布什（George W. Bush）列举了挫败的袭击，这是他对美国军事入侵伊拉克的案件的一部分，该案件推翻了其总统萨达姆·侯赛因（Saddam Hussein）。年轻的布什在2002年谈到侯赛因时说：“毫无疑问，他不能忍受我们。毕竟，这是一个试图杀死我父亲的家伙。”
The Biden administration disclosed the latest specific allegations of a plot to kill Trump three days after last year’s presidential election. In charging documents filed in federal court, the FBI described a phone interview it conducted during the heat of the campaign with Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national residing in Tehran, who had been deported from the U.S. in 2008 following a 14-year prison stay in New York for robbery. Prosecutors have charged Shakeri with attempting to hire hit men to kill an Iranian American journalist living in New York. But Shakeri claimed in his conversations with the FBI, according to the criminal complaint, to have received new orders in September from an official of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: Kill Trump.
拜登政府透露了去年总统大选三天后杀死特朗普的阴谋的最新特定指控。联邦调查局（FBI）在向联邦法院提交的文件中，描述了在竞选期间与居住在德黑兰的阿富汗国民法哈德·沙克里（Farhad Shakeri）进行的电话采访，他在纽约因抢劫而在纽约进行了14年监禁后，于2008年被驱逐出美国。检察官已指控Shakeri试图雇用命中的男子杀死居住在纽约的一名伊朗美国记者。但是，根据刑事申诉，沙克利在与联邦调查局的对话中声称，他于9月收到了伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队官员的新命令：杀死特朗普。
Shakeri told the FBI that he warned his contact that such an effort would cost a “huge” amount of money, according to charging documents. In response, the Iranian official said, “we have already spent a lot of money … so money’s not an issue,” Shakeri told the FBI. Shakeri further explained that he believed the official was referring to money already spent to try to assassinate Trump. Shakeri said his military contact asked on October 7 for an assassination plan to be delivered within seven days. If Shakeri failed to do so, he said the contact told him they would try again after the election, which the Iranians expected Trump to lose. (Such an assessment was also likely upsetting to Trump.)
Shakeri告诉联邦调查局，他警告他的联系人，根据收费文件，这种努力将花费“大量”的钱。作为回应，伊朗官员说：“我们已经花了很多钱了……所以钱不是问题，” Shakeri告诉联邦调查局。Shakeri进一步解释说，他相信该官员指的是已经花了的钱来试图暗杀特朗普。Shakeri说，他的军事联系于10月7日要求在7天内提出暗杀计划。如果Shakeri没有这样做，他说联系人告诉他，他们将在选举后再次尝试，伊朗人希望特朗普输掉。（这样的评估也可能使特朗普感到不安。）
Around the same time that Shakeri was charged, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in an unclassified November 2024 report that “Iranian officials continue to publicly reiterate their vows to conduct lethal operations in the United States.” The “priority targets” listed in the report included Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former Commander of U.S. Central Command Kenneth McKenzie, who were all directly involved in the 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
大约在被指控Shakeri的同时，国家情报主任办公室在2024年11月的一份未分类的报告中宣布：“伊朗官员继续公开重申其誓言，以在美国进行致命的行动。”报告中列出的“优先目标”包括特朗普，前国务卿迈克·庞培（Mike Pompeo）和美国中央指挥前司令肯尼斯·麦肯齐（Kenneth McKenzie），他们都直接参与了2020年被暗杀Qassem Soleimani，这是伊斯兰革命卫队的前负责人Qassem Soleimani。
“I’ll be taking precautions the rest of my life,” McKenzie told the United States Naval Institute and Coast Guard Academy last year.
麦肯齐（McKenzie）去年对美国海军学院和海岸警卫队学院说：“我将采取预防措施。”
Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.: Inside the decision to assassinate Iran’s ruthless general
肯尼斯·F·麦肯齐（Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr。）：暗杀伊朗无情的将军的决定
Soleimani was killed by a drone strike in Iraq, where U.S. officials said he was directing attacks against American forces. His death sparked calls for revenge against U.S. officials. In 2022, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei featured an animated video on his website that depicts a targeted assassination of Trump by Iranian drones as he golfs near his Mar-a-Lago estate. In the video, Trump receives a text message before he is killed that reads, “Soleimani’s murderer and the one who gave the order will pay the price.”
Soleimani被伊拉克的无人机罢工杀害，美国官员说他正在指挥对美军的袭击。他的去世引发了对美国官员的报仇呼吁。2022年，Ayatollah Ali Khamenei在他的网站上展示了一个动画视频，该视频描绘了伊朗无人机在Mar-A-Lago庄园附近的高尔夫球时对特朗普进行的暗杀。在视频中，特朗普在被杀害之前收到了一条短信，上面写着：“ Soleimani的凶手和下达命令的人将付出代价。”
Such public calls could inspire a lone-wolf attacker. “Part of the problem is it’s not just hit men or just officials of the government that may be doing this,” Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton told us. “The threat can come from a variety of different places. It’s not just those expressly organized by the government in Tehran.”
这样的公众电话可能会激发孤独的攻击者。特朗普的前国家安全顾问约翰·博尔顿（John Bolton）告诉我们：“问题的一部分是，这不仅是打击男人或可能正在这样做的政府官员。”“威胁可能来自各个不同的地方。不仅是政府在德黑兰明确组织的那些地方。”
Bolton has also been targeted for assassination by Iran for his role in the Soleimani strike, according to the Justice Department. The FBI is still offering a $20 million reward for any information that leads to the arrest of Shahram Poursafi, a uniformed member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, for a 2022 plot to kill Bolton. Poursafi attempted to pay individuals as much as $300,000 to “eliminate” Bolton in Washington or Maryland, including at one point providing an individual with specific details of Bolton’s schedule that did not seem to be publicly available, according to court documents. (If Bolton was successfully dispatched, Poursafi added at one point, he had a second “job,” this one worth $1 million.)
司法部称，博尔顿还因其在索利马尼罢工中的作用而被杀害伊朗被暗杀。联邦调查局仍在为导致伊斯兰革命卫队统一成员Shahram Poursafi逮捕的任何信息提供2000万美元的奖励，以杀死Bolton。法庭文件显示，Poursafi试图向个人支付多达300,000美元的个人费用，以“消除”华盛顿或马里兰州的博尔顿，其中包括在某一时刻为个人提供了博尔顿日程安排的具体细节，但似乎并未公开可用。（如果Bolton成功派遣，Poursafi在某一时刻补充说，他有第二份“工作”，这是价值100万美元的）。
The unclassified November 2024 report pointed to another alleged Iranian assassination plot that members of the government have separately said they believe included Trump. On August 6, U.S. prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint against Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national who had recently traveled to Iran. They alleged that he’d flown to Texas four months earlier to recruit others, including a confidential informant for the FBI, to assassinate “U.S. officials,” according to a complaint filed in federal court. “Specifically, Merchant requested men who could do the killing, approximately twenty-five people who could perform a protest as a distraction after the murder occurred, and a woman to do ‘reconnaissance,’” the complaint stated.
未分类的2024年11月的报告指出，另一个据称伊朗暗杀阴谋，政府成员已单独表示，他们相信包括特朗普。8月6日，美国检察官对最近前往伊朗的巴基斯坦国民阿西夫·商人（Asif Merchant）提出了刑事诉讼。他们声称，他四个月前飞往德克萨斯州，招募其他人，包括联邦调查局的机密线人，以暗杀“美国官员”。投诉说：“具体来说，商人要求男人可以杀人，大约有25人可以在谋杀案发生后分散抗议活动，而妇女进行'侦察'。”
The target of his assassination plot, he later told undercover law-enforcement officers posing as hit men, was a “political person,” and the protests would take place at political rallies, according to the complaint. Merchant described himself as a “representative,” a word the officers interpreted to mean he was working for other people outside the U.S. He was arrested after making plans to leave the country again.
申诉称，他的暗杀情节的目标是，他后来告诉卧底执法人员作为命中的人，是一个“政治人物”，抗议活动将在政治集会上进行。商人将自己描述为“代表”，这是警官解释的一个词，意味着他正在为美国以外的其他人工作，他在计划再次离开该国后被捕。
Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, told us the threats from Iran “should be taken incredibly seriously.” But she also pointed out that, almost immediately upon returning to office, Trump withdrew the security protections for some of his former officials facing similar danger, including Bolton and retired U.S. Army General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “So either he doesn’t take the threat of it that seriously or he’s recklessly putting at risk former senior officials,” she concluded.
美国企业研究所的外交和国防政策局长，大西洋的一位撰稿人科里·沙克（Kori Schake）告诉我们，伊朗的威胁“应该非常重视”。但她还指出，几乎立即返回任职后，特朗普撤回了对他的一些前官员面临类似危险的安全保护，包括博尔顿和退休的美国陆军将军马克·米利（Mark Milley），前参谋长董事长马克·米利（Mark Milley）。她总结说：“因此，要么他不认真地承担威胁的威胁，要么鲁ck危险前往前高级官员。”
Bolton—still facing very real Iranian peril—was more blunt. “Why doesn’t he think about the assassination threat against him and his former officials? Well, he’s as safe as anybody, and he doesn’t care about the rest of us.”
博尔顿 - 面对非常真实的伊朗危险 - 更加直率。“他为什么不考虑对他和他的前官员的暗杀威胁？好吧，他和任何人一样安全，而且他不在乎我们其他人。”
