Israel shared intelligence with the United States indicating that Iran had recently developed a new plot to assassinate President Donald Trump, CNN reported, citing two people with knowledge of the situation.
One source said the intelligence was passed along during the current week. A second source noted that American officials had already been receiving a stream of information over recent weeks about possible threats to President Trump, but described the Israeli tip as the first to point to a specific plan.
Details about the nature of the alleged plot were not made public. According to two sources familiar with the matter, U.S. agencies had not independently confirmed the intelligence and were not previously tracking the plan before Israel’s warning arrived.
Several U.S. officials told CNN they suspected the Israeli intelligence may have been designed to influence President Trump’s thinking on whether to pursue broader military operations against Iran.
The White House chose not to comment directly on the reported warning, instead pointing to the president’s own recent public statements about threats from Iran. The Wall Street Journal was the first outlet to report on the Israeli intelligence.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, President Trump addressed the threat directly: “They want to take out the US leader — me. I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long. These are evil, sick people. And we have to root out that cancer. That cancer. You know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early. And that’s the way I feel.”
Trump also mentioned that he had recently been briefed on a list placing him at the top of Iran’s assassination targets, though it remained unclear whether he was referring specifically to the intelligence provided by Israel.
This week, at the funeral procession for late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, crowds chanted for Trump’s death and called for revenge over the February 28th airstrike that killed the Iranian leader. Protesters threw objects at a billboard depicting the U.S. president with a bullet pointed at his head bearing the message, “The US killed our father,” followed by “We won’t let you go!” Others set fire to American and British flags, held signs reading “KILL TRUMP,” and displayed posters showing President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a gun’s crosshairs alongside the words, “There will be blood.”
President Trump survived two assassination attempts in July and September of 2024 and has claimed Iran was responsible for both, though no evidence has connected Tehran to either incident. Federal prosecutors have, however, brought charges in two separate alleged Iranian murder-for-hire cases. Iranian threats against Trump stretch back to the U.S. airstrike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.
