Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Iran should be threatened with “destroying” it if it attacks a candidate in the US election, after reporting threats from Tehran targeting him.
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“If I were president, I would inform the country making the threats, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we will destroy your greatest cities and the country itself,” the Republican candidate said at a campaign rally.
The former president, the target of two recent assassination attempts, assured on Tuesday that his life was directly threatened by Iran, in a context of redoubled hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese Islamist movement allied with Tehran.
His campaign team said it had been informed by US intelligence of “concrete” threats of assassination against the Republican candidate, emanating from Iran.
US intelligence confirmed the meeting to AFP, without giving further details.
Similar accusations were rejected by Iran over the summer as “malicious.”
In mid-August, the United States pointed the finger at Iran’s responsibility for several hacking attempts against the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, including one revealed on August 10 by the Republican candidate’s team.
According to US authorities, Iranian hackers sent documents “stolen” from the Republican billionaire’s team to the campaign team of Joe Biden, who has since withdrawn from the race for the White House.
For Donald Trump’s spokesman, these “threats” illustrate the fact that “the terrorist regime in Iran loves the weakness of Kamala Harris and is terrified by the power and determination of President Trump.”
Donald Trump has been the target of two assassination attempts in recent months.
He was shot and wounded in the right ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in mid-July.
On September 15, a man was arrested after being chased by Secret Service agents who spotted him with a gun near the golf course where Donald Trump was playing. He was charged Tuesday with attempted murder.
