A top Iranian lawmaker appeared to warn President Donald Trump about his personal safety Saturday, telling the president to “worry about his own security” as tensions escalate over control of the Strait of Hormuz.
“The U.S. President ought to worry about his own security rather than his endless bluffing regarding the Strait of Hormuz; before he ends up hiding in a food truck,” Ebrahim Azizi, chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, wrote on X.
Azizi’s reference to a “food truck” appeared to invoke an extraordinary security operation during Trump’s trip to Turkey last month, when the president was secretly transported in a catering vehicle to a separate military aircraft after U.S. officials received intelligence about a potential Iranian threat against Trump or his plane.
Trump confirmed the episode earlier this week, saying the Secret Service and military instructed him to switch aircraft as he departed Ankara.
“They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane — equal safety — but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say,” Trump told reporters.
“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it,” he added. “I get a lot of threats.”
The president dismissed concerns about his own safety, adding, “I don’t worry about anything, to be honest.”
Azizi’s warning comes amid an increasingly heated confrontation between Washington and Tehran over the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump declaring Friday that the United States effectively controls the critical waterway and joking that he would soon make it American territory.
“After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said during an event in Nassau County, New York.
“Essentially, that’s what it is,” he added. “We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to.”
Iranian officials responded defiantly, with Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi insisting Tehran alone would determine when the strait is opened or closed.
“The Strait of Hormuz cannot be seized by tweet, nor by aircraft carrier, nor by issuing an order, nor by an election speech,” Gharibabadi wrote on X. “Iran neither fears threats nor cowers before displays of power.”
“The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian,” he added, vowing that Iran would continue enforcing its blockade.
Azizi’s apparent warning also comes against the backdrop of longstanding Iranian threats against Trump, which have intensified following the killing of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in U.S.-Israeli strikes at the outset of the war.
Trump has repeatedly warned Tehran that any attempt to assassinate him would trigger devastating U.S. retaliation.
“If they did that, they would be obliterated. That would be the end,” Trump said last year while restoring his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. “I’ve left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated. There won’t be anything left.”
Last month, amid renewed reports of Iranian threats against his life, Trump again said he had left instructions for an overwhelming response should Tehran succeed in killing him.
“I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with,” Trump said. “The only thing is, I’ve left instructions — if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before.”
Trump subsequently warned that “1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded” and aimed at Iran, with thousands more prepared to follow should the regime attempt to assassinate him.
The rhetoric has been accompanied by increasingly violent anti-American imagery inside Iran. Recent state-sponsored billboards in Tehran have depicted the skeleton of an American soldier lying along the Strait of Hormuz, Trump inside a coffin beneath the words “We Kill Trump,” and the president being strangled alongside the message “Revenge is inevitable.”
Iranian state media and diplomatic accounts have also spent recent days mocking Trump over the Turkey security operation, with Iran’s embassy in South Africa previously taunting that the president would be “hidden in a trash can before long” and accusing him of “fleeing in a food truck.”
Trump, however, dismissed concerns about the threats against him when asked about the extraordinary security precautions earlier this week.
“I have a lot of threats that you don’t know about,” Trump said. “Any consequential president has a lot of threats. Non-consequential presidents don’t get threatened, and I think that I may be the most consequential.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
Read the full article here