WASHINGTON — President Trump brushed off an Iranian official’s threat to assassinate him using a drone as he tans at Mar-a-Lago — saying he hasn’t sunbathed in years.
“It’s been a long time. I don’t know, maybe I was around seven or so. I’m not too big into it,” the president told reporters at the White House Wednesday.
“I guess it’s a threat. I’m not sure it’s a threat, actually, but perhaps it is.”
Javad Larijani, a senior adviser to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamanei, told Iranian state TV that Trump, 79, could face retribution for bombing three key nuclear sites last month in support of an Israeli mission to prevent the Islamic republic from developing nuclear weapons.
“Trump has done something so that he can no longer sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago,” Larijani said.
“As he lies there with his stomach to the sun, a small drone might hit him in the navel. It’s very simple.”
Trump, who frequently soaks up the sun while golfing on weekends, is reputed to favor spray-tanning.
Tehran agreed to a Trump-brokered cease-fire with Israel nearly 48 hours after the US strikes and has not meaningfully retaliated, other than by firing a symbolic volley of missiles at a US airbase in Qatar, for which it provided advance notice allowing for evacuation and interception.
Iran allegedly tried to assassinate Trump previously as payback for the US leader’s 2020 assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani with an airstrike in Iraq.
The Justice Department in November charged Farhad Shakeri, who remains at large, for allegedly working with Iran to monitor and murder Trump. Two alleged conspirators, Carlisle Rivera of Brooklyn and Jonathan Loadholt of Staten Island, were arrested.
An Iranian-made video from 2022 depicted Trump being assassinated on a golf course, with the film reportedly winning Khamanei’s animation contest for work “on the topic of revenge on Trump [and other] murderers of Gen. #Soleimani.”
