The Iranian threat that prompted President Trump’s secret Air Force One swap last month emerged as he was heading into his last day at the NATO summit in Turkey on July 8.
According to two U.S. officials with knowledge of the threat, U.S. intelligence picked up multiple streams of information. They knew that there was a specific threat of a surface-to-air missile against Air Force One, meaning whichever plane was carrying the president, and that someone in the vicinity of the NATO summit had been spotted with a shoulder-fired missile. And the Iranians knew specifically where Mr. Trump was staying in Ankara, including which floor of the building, the officials said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence related to the threat.
The information was deemed sufficiently credible to lead Mr. Trump and senior members of his administration to engage in an extraordinary decoy effort to get him out of Turkey. He boarded the older Air Force One in front of the cameras, which he had announced he would be taking “for old time’s sake,” before sneaking off in an airport catering container and taking a military jet out of the country.
Mr. Trump has been the target of Iranian plots in the past. He was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet while campaigning in Butler, Pa., in 2024 and targeted by another armed man at his Florida golf course later that year. Those two assassination attempts were unrelated to the Iranian threats.
But a man was convicted in connection with a murder-for-hire plot against Mr. Trump that was uncovered by the Biden administration. That plot was said to be led by Iranians, using a proxy force.
