In a recent interview with NewNation’s Katie Pavlich, former President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Iran, vowing severe retaliation if threats against his life, as seen on Iranian state television, materialize. The interview delved into footage aired by Iran showing a July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. The broadcast ominously claimed that “this time it won’t miss.” Trump responded emphatically, saying, “Well, they shouldn’t be doing it, but I’ve left notification. Anything ever happens, we’re going to blow the – the whole country is going to get blown up.”

Trump also took the opportunity to criticize President Joe Biden for what he perceives as a lack of strong response to these threats. Trump suggested that Biden should have been more vocal and decisive in countering Iranian aggression, particularly due to the lingering tensions following the January 2020 U.S. killing of Qasem Soleimani, an influential Iranian general. This incident has kept the Iranian regime hostile towards former Trump administration officials, including John Bolton, who is also under threat of assassination.

Expressing his dissatisfaction, Trump remarked, “You know, when they made a statement, we always said, ‘Why isn’t Biden saying anything?’ Because he didn’t.” He underscored the importance of presidential solidarity, stating, “But a president has to defend a president like, if I were here and they were making that threat to somebody even, not even a president, but somebody, like they did with me, I would absolutely hit them so hard.” Trump concluded with a resolute stance, insisting that any attack would lead to the aggressors being “wiped off the face of this earth.”

Last week, Trump appeared to be poised to launch a military strike against the regime, who have killed thousands of civilians protesting against the Islamic government. On Sunday, an Iranian official told Reuters that the death toll had increased to at least 5,000 people. Iranians have been protesting since last month over a faltering economy. On January 2, Trump said the U.S. was ‘locked and loaded’ and ready to strike Iran if the killings continued. 

But on Wednesday, the president suggested that he believed the regime’s line that they had stopped killing civilians. ‘We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping, and it’s stopped and stopping, and there’s no plan for executions or an execution,’ Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a bill signing event that would allow whole milk into public school lunch rooms. The president added that if he finds out that’s not the case, he would be ‘very upset.’

During his hour and 45-minute-long press conference on Tuesday, marking his one-year in office for a second time, the president was asked if a military option remained on the table. Trump replied that ‘they were going to hang 837 people.’ ‘We let them know if that happens, that will be a very bad day for them, and they decided not to do it. They didn’t hang the people. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in the future, but supposedly they’re taking that off the table,’ he said. ‘So we’re just gonna have to see what happens with Iran,’ Trump said.