JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
American intelligence officials briefed former President Donald Trump yesterday on assassination threats against him from Iran. A Trump campaign spokesman says the focus was on, quote, "real and specific threats" against the Republican presidential nominee. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is here in the studio to tell us more. Hey, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
SUMMERS: So Ryan, tell us - what have you learned about what U.S. intelligence officials told the former president and his team yesterday about those alleged threats?
LUCAS: Right. Well, American intelligence officials have confirmed that they did indeed provide a briefing to the former president, but they're not saying anything beyond that. The Trump campaign is saying more, though. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said that the briefing focused on, as you said at the top, real and specific threats from Iran on Trump's life. He also said that U.S. officials have identified what he calls continued and coordinated attacks that have increased in the past few months and that law enforcement here in the U.S. is working to make sure that Trump is safe and protected.
SUMMERS: And, of course, former President Trump has already been the target of those two assassination attempts. There was the one in July at the rally in Pennsylvania. And then there was another one less than two weeks ago that happened in Florida - any indication that either of those two events was linked to Iran?
LUCAS: At this point, no. Officials say there is no indication of that. The FBI has said that they found no foreign connection with the shooter in Pennsylvania. And so far, at least, the FBI also says it hasn't found any foreign links in the Florida case either. It is still early in that Florida case, but that's what the bureau said so far.
SUMMERS: I got to say, Ryan, I've covered a lot of presidential campaigns, and it does, to me, seem a bit more like a movie plot than real life that a foreign country would attempt to assassinate a former U.S. president currently campaigning for the presidency again. Why would Iran want to kill Trump?
LUCAS: Well, we don't really have to speculate as to why, and that's because Iranian officials have said quite openly that they want to avenge the death of an Iranian general who was killed during the Trump administration. That's General Qassem Soleimani. He's an almost mythic figure in Iran, and the U.S. killed him in a drone strike in Baghdad in January of 2020, when Trump was still in office.
And top Iranian officials have said publicly that they want revenge for Soleimani's death. They've said they want to kill Trump. They want to kill former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. They want to kill U.S. military leaders who were involved in the Soleimani strike. The justice department, in fact, even brought a case back in 2022 against a pair of Iranians for allegedly plotting to assassinate John Bolton, who was Trump's national security adviser, of course. And we know also that these Iranian threats are still a concern for the U.S. and that's because a couple of former Trump-era officials are still receiving U.S. government protection even now.
SUMMERS: Right. And didn't the FBI arrest someone this summer with ties to Iran for allegedly plotting to assassinate American political figures?
LUCAS: That's right. There was a Pakistani man that prosecutors say had ties to Iran. He was arrested in July. He allegedly was trying to hire hitmen here in the U.S. to murder U.S. politicians or government officials. Those politicians and government officials are not named in court papers, though, so we do not know at this point specifically who they were.
SUMMERS: Ryan, I do want to ask you about the politics here. Trump is trying to frame all of these threats as election interference by Iran. He claims that Iran is afraid of his potential return to the White House, that his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris - that she's weak. So what is Trump's angle here politically?
LUCAS: What I would say to that question is that we are - what? - six weeks away now from the election. So there is going to be a lot of politicking that is going on. That said, U.S. intelligence agencies and the FBI have said that Iran is indeed trying to interfere in the U.S. election, trying to do so in a variety of ways. And intelligence agencies say the goal of Iran is to sow discord, to undermine the U.S. electoral process.
The main way that we have seen Iran do that so far - publicly, at least - is through cyberattacks like the hacking of the Trump campaign, trying to leak internal Trump campaign documents that we've seen. U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran is getting more aggressive with its influence operations of that sort. But Iran's threats against Trump, against his life - that's something that has been going on for a while now. It's something that began before this presidential campaign.
SUMMERS: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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