Iran was planning to assassinate US President Donald Trump with the use of a shoulder-launched missile while he traveled on Air Force One for the NATO Summit in Turkey's Ankara last month, a report has said.
This intelligence input was passed on to the White House by Israel, Reuters reported, citing sources.
This comes after reports which said that Trump faced an alleged assassination threat during his trip to Turkey last month and secretly flew out on a smaller C-32A aircraft after ditching the Qatar-gifted Boeing 747-8. The US President also confirmed the plane swap recently, saying he does whatever Secret Service and the military advise him to do.
Multiple Iran plots against Trump
The plot against the US President for his Turkey was not the only one. According to Reuters, the US has received several warnings from Israel over the past year that Iran was scheming such moves.
The warnings passed down to the US intelligence also included plots to assassinate Trump by a sniper or recruit someone to attack him with a knife at a large public event, the report further added.
{{/usCountry}}The warnings passed down to the US intelligence also included plots to assassinate Trump by a sniper or recruit someone to attack him with a knife at a large public event, the report further added.
{{/usCountry}}The tips began in the lead-up to the 12-day war in June 2025 and intensified prior to the US decision to go to war in Iran in February, according to the Reuters report.
The Turkey plot
Among the warnings, the most detailed was the one about Iran's assassination bid on Trump ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara in July, the report quoted a US official as saying. Israeli officials had allegedly briefed the White House about information that indicated Iran may try to kill Trump, potentially with a shoulder-launched missile, while he traveled on Air Force One for the summit.
The alleged threat had prompted the US president to fly an older Boeing 747 aircraft instead of the Qatari-gifted.
However, Washington Post report said that Trump had secretly swapped the plane again. Trump was ferried out of the older Air Force One aircraft in a catering container, the Post cited an anonymous US official as saying. The container carried Trump to a smaller C-32A aircraft, in which he flew to Britain.
Trump, who was in Ankara for a NATO summit, said at the time he would be taking the older Boeing 747 so that members of the US military at an airbase in Britain could tour the new plane.
However, several US media outlets, including the New York Times, reported that a threat from Iranian proxy forces had prompted the switch.
There have been apprehensions within the US intelligence community that Iran may want to retaliate the killing its military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020. But the Central Intelligence Agency has not been able to corroborate some of the specific threats against Trump's life shared by Israeli intelligence since early last year, the officials was quoted as saying.
On NATO episode, a Turkish official was quoted as saying that country's intelligence agencies also did not have any evidence on Israeli claim over Iran threat to Trump. Turkey has shared the assessment with the American side.
Despite the fact that there has been no conclusive evidence to verify that Trump actually faces Iran assassination threat, White House officials and the Secret Service have taken steps to mitigate the threats out of an abundance of caution, including an extraordinary deception operation during the Turkey trip that involved moving Trump from Air Force One to a different aircraft for his flight out of the country.
This underscores how Israeli intelligence's influence on Trump administration's decision-making about Iran at a time of heightened tensions with Tehran .