WASHINGTON — Iran’s Islamist rulers have made no public comment on the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump in the three days since the shooting attack on the man whom they have long seen as their nemesis and targeted with threats of vengeance since he left office.
The only references in Iranian state media to Saturday’s attack on Trump have been articles citing details of the shooting at his election rally in Pennsylvania, showing images of the aftermath and amplifying conspiracy theories about whether it was real or staged.
Iran has threatened revenge against Trump and his key aides for carrying out the January 2020 assassination of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a Baghdad drone strike. It was part of what Trump called a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Tehran for its nuclear and other perceived malign activities.
Since then, one of the most explicit threats against Trump has come from Amir Ali Hajizadeh, aerospace chief of Iran’s top military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He told state TV in February 2023 that “we are looking to kill Trump” to avenge Soleimani.
There is no indication of Iranian involvement in the Trump rally shooting, with U.S. authorities naming only one suspect, the 20-year-old American male shooter whom U.S. Secret Service personnel shot and killed at the scene.
CNN reported on Tuesday that the Secret Service had increased security around Trump “in recent weeks” in response to an alleged Iranian assassination plot that U.S. authorities purportedly learned about from intelligence attributed to an unidentified “human source.”
The Washington Post and New York Times published their own reports on the alleged Iranian threat, sourcing it to unnamed U.S. officials.
Iran’s U.N. Mission in New York told VOA the accusations are “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
“Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice,” the mission said in a statement.
U.S. Secret Service communications chief Anthony Guglielmi responded to the CNN report by telling VOA that his security agency and others are “constantly receiving new potential threat information and taking action to adjust resources, as needed.”
“We cannot comment on any specific threat stream other than to say that the Secret Service takes threats seriously and responds accordingly,” Guglielmi wrote.
One of the Iranian state media reports highlighting conspiracy theories about Saturday’s incident was published by the IRGC-run Tasnim news agency on Sunday.
It published a collage of photos of the bloodied former president with a superimposed three-word headline in Persian: “Blood and pig.”
Other state media articles published photos of Trump defiantly raising and pumping his fist to his supporters after Secret Service agents helped him to get back on his feet.
Shahram Kholdi, an Iranian Canadian teacher of Middle East history at Canada’s University of Waterloo, discussed Iran’s state media coverage of the shooting in the Tuesday edition of VOA’s Flashpoint Global Crises program.
The following interview transcript is edited for brevity and clarity.
VOA: Why would Iran allow its state media to publish photos of the wounded former president showing what many Americans see as his triumphant stance in the face of danger?
Shahram Kholdi, University of Waterloo, Canada: The Iranian regime’s hardcore supporters in the Basiji paramilitary force and the IRGC — the people who are willing to kill and die to keep this regime in power — they don’t see what you see as a positive. They see the weakness, they see division in the American masses, they see fractures in the U.S. democratic system. And the regime actually uses those pictures of Trump to reinforce this propaganda trope that the U.S. is a facade of a democracy, that there is something more sinister happening behind the scenes.
We should not be surprised to see the Iranian regime’s propaganda machine focus on such sinister scenarios in the next few weeks. Even though their propaganda machine is heavily equipped and well-manned, it has been only a few days since the shooting, and it takes time for them to churn out these kinds of stories.
VOA: Given Trump’s record of being tough on Iran, does the Iranian leadership have any fear that highlighting his survival of an assassination attempt will boost his election prospects and return him to power?
Kholdi: Iranian officials are fearful of that. There has been an atypical restraint by officials who are generally quick to react and make all sorts of preposterous statements on such occasions. They did not do so this time. They are on their toes right now.
The regime’s Chinese and Russian allies may have assured Tehran that if Trump is reelected, they will protect its interests in any negotiations with him.
President Joe Biden’s failure to stop U.S.-sanctioned Iranian oil being from exported to China, and to stop Iran from assisting Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, also has emboldened the regime.
But on the other hand, given the prospect of the Islamic republic once again facing the massive pressure campaign that Trump previously imposed on it, with a massive reduction in Iranian oil production and exports and interceptions of tankers, I think the regime is erring on the side of caution in its response to the assassination attempt. But the Chinese and Russians may have advised them to do so. I wouldn’t attribute that to any impeccable wisdom on their part.
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