Donald Trump back in charge? It is not only in Western embassies that such a scenario is starting to give people cold sweats. Iran also has very bad memories of his time in the White House. To the credit of the former President of the United States: denunciation of the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, reestablishment of a wide range of sanctions and above all his green light for the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. Enough to want to kill him four months before a potential presidential victory? According to several American media outlets, Donald Trump, who miraculously survived an attack on July 13, is in fact the subject of threats from Tehran this time. CNN and other media outlets reported Tuesday, July 16, that U.S. authorities had received intelligence from a “human source” about a plan by the Iranian regime against the current Republican candidate, prompting the Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting American political figures, to raise its protection level.
According to Gabriel Noronha, former Special Advisor on Iran at the US State Department (between 2019 and 2020), the Islamic Republic is tough on Donald Trump. A member of the American Jewish Institute for National Security (JINSA), the Republican believes that such threats appear credible given the Iranian regime’s record of assassinating opponents over the past forty-five years. While targeting Trump seems to him to be a goal that is perhaps too ambitious for Iran, “they have had this kind of action in mind for a long time,” assures this former collaborator of Senator John McCain.
L’Express: Iran has rejected accusations that it was involved in a plot to kill Donald Trump. Does this threat seem credible to you?
Gabriel Noronha: Yes, and for several reasons. First, if you look at the last forty-five years of the existence of this regime, the Iranian regime has committed nearly 1,000 targeted assassinations and murders of opponents around the world. I am talking in particular about the murder of three Iranian Kurdish opponents and their interpreter in 1992 in Berlin, but also the Amia attack in Argentina two years later. Or more recently in France, the foiled bomb attack targeting an Iranian opposition rally. So I would say that there is a form of coherence in these press revelations given the past activities of the Iranian regime. Especially since those who are behind the attacks that I have just mentioned are the same as those currently in power in Iran today.
We must then recall the statements of several Iranian officials since 2020 (Editor’s note: the year of the death of General Qassem Soleimani, a figure of the regime killed by the United States). All of them have indicated that they wanted to eliminate Donald Trump and other senior officials of the American administration involved in the assassination of Soleimani. I am thinking for example of the words of the former Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi who declared in 2022: “If Trump and Pompeo are not judged […] Muslims will take their revenge as martyrs.”
In 2022, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan issued a statement warning Iran against taking any action against U.S. officials. Despite this, the Iranian regime has continued to threaten Trump and other senior officials, including General Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace forces (who reportedly said in 2023, “God willing, we will kill Trump, Pompeo, McKenzie, and the military commanders who ordered [l’assassinat de Soleimani]Editor’s note).
The Iranian regime generally targets opponents and journalists. Targeting a political figure of Donald Trump’s caliber would be a turning point…
It would be spectacular, but they have had this kind of action in mind for a long time. If they have not done it yet, it is not that they do not want to, it simply means that they have not yet succeeded.
“Their fear is that if Trump comes back to power, he will put maximum pressure on them again.”
As long as Trump is just a candidate, they feel that they have more latitude to try to kill him. That it would be less adversarial. So they would like to eliminate him before he becomes president again, which would be within the next four months if they can. After that, things would become more difficult. I think targeting the president of the United States would be an ambitious goal because he has a large security detail. I am more concerned about the senior officials who work under him. Those are the people who I think would be at greatest risk of being assassinated.
Is it realistic to think that the Tehran regime has the logistical and human resources necessary to target a personality like Donald Trump?
It does not appear from the declassified documents that the Iranian regime has agents infiltrated in the United States, but rather that it is trying to recruit people to do the job for it. The U.S. Justice Department itself has publicly stated that the Iranians are trying to recruit Iranian-Americans and Canadians, as well as cartel members and members of the Hells Angels, a violent motorcycle gang, to carry out assassinations. Recall that in 2022, a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had thus fomented a plot and offered $300,000 to kill John Bolton (former national security adviser to Donald Trump, editor’s note) and a million dollars to kill Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
You were an advisor at the White House just after Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. How did you experience things from the inside?
I took away several things. First, the Iranians were extremely concerned about our pressure and our sanctions. They were determined to carry out terrorist actions as long as they had the money to do so. I also saw how, as soon as they had money, they managed to reallocate it to terrorism rather than to their people. That was the main thing I learned: their priority is their revolutionary foreign policy, which they elevate above all else. The Supreme Leader himself will say it, its goal is to convert and destroy the forces of capitalism, communism, and Zionism, and they want to replace them with an Islamic caliphate. That is their ultimate goal. They want to do that by undermining all their regional rivals, by destroying Israel, and then going from there, and they want to establish a Shiite caliphate with Iran at the center.
“If other countries behaved like Iran, they would have already faced massive consequences.”
Is the Iranian regime really afraid of Trump returning to the White House?
They are very concerned because they know that his policies have been very damaging to them in the past. They have damaged the regime’s ability to raise money to finance terrorism. Their fear is that if Trump comes back to power, he will put maximum pressure on them again. That he will be much more willing to take aggressive measures against them, where the Biden administration has been incredibly timid, refusing to take appropriate measures against the nuclear and terrorist threats. Why? Because they are afraid of escalation around the world, which makes them deferential to the regime. In the same way that they were initially unwilling to supply certain weapons to Ukraine because they were afraid of what Putin might do in return. They don’t want to take measures that they think will provoke the Iranians. And in doing so, they are incentivizing the regime to take aggressive measures against them because the regime is convinced that there will be no consequences.
Is the West downplaying the Iranian threat too much?
Absolutely. I think if other countries were behaving like Iran, they would have faced massive consequences by now. But one of the reasons why Western leaders have done nothing about Iran is because the Iranian lobbyists have been very effective in convincing them not to act. They have compromised them intellectually by making them believe that confronting them would cause more problems. I think that is the epitome of deterrence: preventing their adversaries from taking action against them by making them fear that the consequences would be even worse if they punished them.
The Chinese and the Russians still represent the greatest security threat in the world, but if you look at Iran’s nuclear program, I think we should be extremely concerned that they’re going to get close to a nuclear bomb soon. I don’t know exactly when, but it’s coming soon. But we’re not really worried about it. Take France. The Iranians have a state-owned bank operating in Paris (Bank Melli, editor’s note) that has billions of dollars in assets. All of these banks are accused of supporting terrorism and facilitating the regime’s acquisition of elements of its nuclear program and its ballistic missile program. So there are all these assets in circulation that the French government, for example, refuses to take action on. For the simple reason that they’re afraid that Iran will attack French interests. Every Western country has that same fear. And that’s why Iran continues to get away with it.
Should international pressure on the Iranian regime be increased?
First, we need to cut off oil export revenues and impose sanctions on imports and goods. Second, Europe needs to come fully on board with bold banking sanctions, comprehensive oil and energy sanctions on Iran. That’s the first step, because if you cut off Iran’s financing, it won’t be able to implement its war plans. But we also need to put massive diplomatic and military pressure on the regime to make it understand that if it gets carried away, it will suffer serious consequences.
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