Trump reportedly feared retaliatory assassination from Iran in 2020

• An upcoming book from writers Peter Baker and Susan Glasser stated that former President Donald Trump feared a retaliatory assassination from Iran.
• Baker and Glasser wrote that Trump considered striking again but backed off considering that his time in office was nearing its end.
• They added that after that, Trump started pressuring then-VP Mike Pence to block the electoral college results confirming his defeat.

Former President Donald Trump reportedly told friends in December 2020 that he feared an assassination from Iran, about a year after a US drone strike killed Iranian general Qassem Suleimani.

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, a husband-and-wife team who write for the New York Times and the New Yorker, wrote about it in their new book, The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021.

Baker and Glasser wrote about Trump’s Iran policy, which includes reluctant talks over the nuclear deal signed under the Obama administration, the US withdrawal in May 2018, and Trump calling off air strikes at the last minute in June 2019.

Trump said at the time, “I thought about it for a second and I said, ‘You know what, they shot down an unmanned drone … and here we are sitting with 150 dead people that would have taken place probably within a half an hour after I said go ahead.’ And I didn’t like it … I didn’t think it was proportionate.”

It was later reported that several people, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, advised Trump against the Iran strikes.

The strike on Suleimani was authorized by Trump six months later. Suleimani commanded the elite Quds (Jerusalem) force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, which was designated a terrorist group in April 2019. He died on Jan. 3, 2020, just as he left Baghdad airport. The strike, which used an MQ-9 Reaper drone, also killed officers of Iran-backed Iraqi militias.

According to the Pentagon, Suleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

Trump touted the strike in an Ohio rally, saying, “We stopped him and we stopped him quickly and we stopped him cold. He was a bad guy. He was a bloodthirsty terrorist, and he’s no longer a terrorist. He’s dead.”

Later, on Dec. 16, 2020, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on Twitter, “Those who ordered the murder of General Suleimani as well as those who carried this out should be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time.”

According to Baker and Glasser, Trump and his advisers considered striking again but backed off considering that Trump’s time in office was nearing its end.

They also wrote, “At a cocktail party, Trump told several of his Florida friends he was afraid Iran would try to assassinate him, so he had to go back to Washington where he would be safer.”

Baker and Glasser then noted that when Trump returned to Washington, he pressured then-vice-president Mike Pence to block electoral college results that confirmed Biden’s victory.

Source: The Guardian