Hyderabad: Former US President Donald Trump has revealed that US intelligence agencies have warned him of a serious assassination threat from Iran.
Taking to his X handle, Trump thanked the US Congress for allocating more budget to the Secret Service and posted, "Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire US Military is watching and waiting.......An attack on a former President is a Death Wish for the attacker"
However, the assassination bid on Trump is not a lone instance. Here are some incidents when a country tried to eliminate leaders of other countries.
- Volodymyr Zelensky (Ukraine ) 2024 : In May 2024, The Ukrainian security service (SBU) said that it has foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and other high-ranking Ukrainian officials. Ever since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, plots to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been commonplace.
- Vladamir Putin ( 2017) : Vladamir Putin himself publicly disclosed in 2017 that he has survived at least five assassination attempts.
- Kim Jong-un (North Korea, 2017) : In March 2017, the North Korea’s ministry of state security accused CIA and South Korea’s intelligence service of being behind an alleged assassination attempt on its leader Kim Jong-un.
- Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in March 2003 : On March 20, 2003, The United States attempted to kill Saddam Hussein with a cruise missile attack in the early hours of this morning, in what President George Bush said were the "early stages" of a US-British invasion of Iraq.
- Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia: The US targeted Milosevic during the Nato bombing campaign of 1999, narrowly missing him when his empty villa was hit by three laser bombs.
- Muammar Gadafy of Libya: After a Libyan terrorist attack in Berlin in 1986, US jets tried to kill Gadafy in bombings which included a strike at his personal compound. It killed his infant adopted daughter.
- President Sukarno of Indonesia: A "top secret" document from 1975 reveals the CIA considered assassinating Sukarno during the Cold War. According to the report, Richard Bissell, who was CIA Deputy Director of Plans at the time, testified there had been discussion within the CIA of the "possibility of an attempt on the life of President Sukarno of Indonesia". Richard Bissell, stressed the CIA had "absolutely nothing" to do with the death of Sukarno in 1970, when his health deteriorated after being put under house arrest.
- Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia: President Nixon claimed that the CIA set up several plots to kill him in the early 1960s. He was deposed in a 1970 coup.
- Salvador Allende of Chile: President Nixon made it clear in 1970 that a CIA assassination of the new left-wing president would not be unwelcomed. Allende was killed in a 1973 coup.
- Ngô Đình Diệm, president of South Vietnam 1963: On November 2, 1963, Ngô Đình Diệm, president of South Vietnam, was arrested and assassinated in a CIA-backed coup d'état led by General Dương Văn Minh.
- Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic: The administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy, through the CIA, plotted the assassination of the dictator for several years before a group of dissidents shot him to death in 1961.
- Patrice Lumumba of Congo President: Eisenhower ordered the assassination of the country's first prime minister in 1960. CIA chief Allen Dulles sent a CIA scientist to Congo with a lethal virus. But before the plan could be activated, Lumumba was deposed. He was later captured with CIA help and killed by rebel forces.
- Fidel Castro of Cuba: The CIA hatched several plots to kill Castro between 1960 and 1965. "The proposed assassination devices ran the gamut from high-powered rifles to poison pills, poison pens, deadly bacterial powders and other devices which strain the imagination,", according to the Church report. The US admitted to eight assassination attempts on Castro, though the Cuban put the figure much higher, with one estimate in the hundreds.
Targeted Killings
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was forced to step back on such killings after a US Senate investigation in the 1970s exposed the scale of its operations. Following investigation, then president Gerald Ford signed in 1976 an executive order stating: “No employee of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire in, political assassination.” In spite of this, the US never totally abandoned the strategy, simply changing the terminology from assassination to targeted killings, from aerial bombing of presidents to drone attacks on alleged terrorist leaders.
A few infamous US targeted killings
- May 2011: Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group Al-Qaeda, was shot and killed at his compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad by United States Navy SEALs of SEAL Team Six.
- September 2011: Anwar al-Awlaki who was a key organiser for the Islamist terrorist group Al-Qaeda. He was killed in a drone strike in September 2011. Awlaki became the first US citizen to be approved for targeted killing by the CIA.
- 2020: Soleimani was assassinated on January 3, 2020 by a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport.
- 2022: Al-Zawahiri was killed on July 31, 2022, in an early-morning drone strike conducted by the US Central Intelligence Agency in the upscale Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul.
Iranian assassination plots
According to the Iran Primer, Iran has reportedly assassinated at least 20 opponents abroad and killed hundreds in bombings of foreign military, diplomatic and cultural facilities as on 2023. It targeted Americans, Europeans, Latin Americans, Israelis and Arabs as well as Iranian opposition members living abroad, according to US, UN, Israeli and other government reports. They included at least 88 attacks or plots. Iran has long harboured intentions to retaliate against Trump for the 2020 killing of its top general, Qassem Soleimani.
List of infamous Iran assassination bids on officials in foreign countries:
- 2022: In August 2022, the Justice Department announced charges against a member of the Revolutionary Guards, Shahram Poursafi, for plotting to murder John Bolton, a national security advisor to President Trump. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Defence Secretary Mark Esper were reportedly also targeted by Iran.
- 2020: In September 2020, Politico reported that Iran was plotting to kill Lana Marks, the US ambassador to South Africa and a close friend of President Donald Trump. It claimed that Iran was weighing several options to retaliate for the US killing of General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020.
- February 14, 2012: Itzhak Shoham, the Israeli ambassador to Thailand, and other diplomats, were allegedly made targets of a botched assassination attempt in Thailand
- September 29, 2011: Adel al Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, was the target of a failed plot to bomb a restaurant where he would be dining.
- August 6, 1991: Shapour Bakhtiar, the former Iranian prime minister, was assassinated allegedly by two Iranian intelligence agents, Vakili Rad and Mohammad Azadi, in Suresnes, France.
- July 13, 1989: Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), was killed in Vienna, Austria.
- July 18, 1980: Shapour Bakhtiar, Iran’s last prime minister during the monarchy, was targeted in a failed assassination attempt outside his residence in a Paris suburb.
- December 7, 1979: Shahriar Shafiq, the former shah’s nephew and a captain in the royal navy, was killed after being shot twice in the head by the Muslim Liberation Group, a previously unknown group, outside his mother’s home in city France.
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