Iran’s threat to assassinate Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign was far more serious than publicly known

>Law enforcement officials warned Trump last year that Tehran had placed operatives in the U.S. with access to surface-to-air missiles.

>Trump’s team worried that the Iranians could try to down his easily recognizable personal jet — better known as “Trump Force One” — as it was taking off or landing.

>The concern intensified after a foiled assassination attempt of Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sept. 15.

>But at one point soon after the Florida incident, Trump’s security detail was concerned enough about the Iran threat that it had Trump travel to an event on a decoy plan owned by Steve Witkoff. He’s a Trump friend and real estate executive who’s now Trump’s envoy to the Middle East.

>During a trip to Pennsylvania the next week, Secret Service agents noticed a drone following Trump’s motorcade. Officers in one of the cars opened up the moonroof and shot it with an electromagnetic gun, disabling it.

>Trump often had boasted at rallies about his killing of Soleimani. But as the Iranian threat intensified, staffers noticed that he talked about it less. And privately, he began expressing more concern about the staging of his events.

>He also worried voters would get “assassination fatigue.” Would Americans, he wondered, want to go through four years of their president being under threat?

Is Iran insane? Even the Biden administration would have been forced to respond to a provocation of that magnitude.