President Joe Biden has issued a stark warning to Iran, stating that any assassination attempt on Former President Donald Trump or other ex-US officials would be considered an act of war, The Washington Post reports. This comes as Trump's campaign claims he has been briefed by US intelligence on specific threats from Iran to assassinate him, according to the BBC.

The Biden administration has been monitoring Iranian threats against Trump for several years, according to National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett. "Should Iran attack any of our citizens, including those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences," Savett said.

A senior Biden administration official revealed that the president sent a message "to the highest levels" of the Iranian government, urging them to cease plotting against Trump and former US officials. The US has specifically cautioned Iran against targeting Trump, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Brian Hook, the Trump administration's special representative for Iran.

Trump took to social media platform X to address the situation. "Big threats on my life by Iran," he posted. "Moves were already made by Iran that didn't work out, but they will try again. I'm surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than ever before. Thank you to Congress for unanimously approving more money to the Secret Service. An attack on a former President is a death wish for the attacker!"

Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung stated, "Intelligence officials have identified that these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months." He added that law enforcement across agencies are working to ensure Trump's protection and a fair election.

TRUMP: BIG THREATS ON MY LIFE BY IRAN

"Iran has already made moves against me, and they will try again.

I'm surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than ever before.

Thank you to Congress for unanimously approving more money to the Secret Service.

An attack on a former… pic.twitter.com/1o0PR2xCnC

— ChazzP12 (@ChazzP12) September 26, 2024

These warnings come after Trump survived an assassination attempt on July 13, when he was wounded, and another person was killed in a shooting at a Pennsylvania rally. On September 15, another incident occurred when a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle near Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. US prosecutors have since charged Ryan Wesley Routh with an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate in connection with this event.

The Trump campaign last month claimed some of its internal communications had been hacked, suggesting Iranian operatives were behind the breach. In 2022, the US Justice Department charged a member of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps with plotting to kill John Bolton, allegedly in retaliation for the US strike that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.

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"As the truth is trickling out of Iran, it appears the regime could have murdered over a thousand Iranian citizens since the protests began," Hook told reporters at a briefing at the State Department.

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Among those were at least a dozen children, Hook said, but cautioned that the numbers were not definitive as Tehran blocked information. He said that "many thousands of Iranians" had also been wounded and at least 7,000 detained in Iran's prisons.

The unrest, which began on Nov. 15 after the Iranian government abruptly raised fuel prices by as much as 300%, spread to more than 100 cities and towns and turned political as young and working-class protesters demanded clerical leaders step down.

Tehran has given no official death toll but Amnesty International said on Monday it had documented the deaths of at least 208 protesters, making the disturbances the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Tehran's clerical rulers have blamed "thugs" linked to its opponents in exile and the country's main foreign foes –the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia – for the unrest.

The struggle of ordinary Iranians to make ends meet has become harder since last year, when US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from Tehran's nuclear deal with six world powers and reimposed sanctions that have further crippled Iran's oil-based economy.

Hook also said a US Navy warship seizing advanced missile parts believed to be linked to Iran from a boat it stopped in the Arabian Sea on Nov. 25 was likely further proof of Tehran's efforts to inflame conflict in the region.

"We interdicted a significant hoard of weapons and missile parts evidently of Iranian origin. The seizure includes sophisticated weapons," he said, adding that the vessel was reportedly heading to Yemen to deliver the weapons.

"The weapon components comprise the most sophisticated weapons seized by the US Navy to date during the Yemen conflict," Hook said.

In recent years, US warships have intercepted and seized Iranian arms likely bound for Iran-aligned Houthi fighters.

Under a United Nations resolution, Tehran is prohibited from supplying, selling or transferring weapons outside the country unless approved by the Security Council. A separate UN resolution on Yemen bans the supply of weapons to Houthi leaders.

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"The Iranian regime does not get a veto over American and Israeli national security. One of the nice things that I've seen in this role is that Iran's foreign policy has brought together Arabs and Israelis in ways we never thought were possible. So that's a gift from this regime. We are going to leverage that," Hook told i24NEWS.

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"We saw it in the Warsaw summit and we have seen it here [in Bahrain]. We are going to continue this work and we think that this sort of work – I wouldn't describe it as normalization – but it's becoming the new normal. When you talk to all of the countries in the Middle East today, what they want to talk about is Iran's aggression, their missile, and their nuclear programs. And together we are working to fight it," Hook continued.

The US Special Representative for Iran also criticized the Obama administration's "accommodation" of Iran, saying the Trump administration is taking an "entirely different approach."

"Iran has a 40-year paradigm of using state terrorism as a tool of statecraft. We have put in place such enormous pressure on Iran to change its behavior. This is the right policy at the right time," Hook said.

This article was originally published by i24NEWS.

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The United States resumed sanctions on Iran's oil, shipping and banking industries on Monday after President Donald Trump pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal earlier this year. It granted temporary exemptions to eight countries allowing them to continue importing Iranian oil, although it said the ultimate goal is to completely halt exports from Iran.

Hook declined to give details of the confidential bilateral deals with the countries, which include China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Greece, Italy and Turkey.

"We have been very careful about applying maximum economic pressure [on Iran] without lifting the price of oil and we have done that successfully," Hook told reporters.

"We are going to be continuing our path to zero," Hook said. "We do want to achieve maximum pressure without harming friends or allies and we don't want to lift the price of oil. We have calibrated this very well."

Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, said on Wednesday that his country can flourish under sanctions and would defeat the United States in the economic war.

Iran's exports peaked at 2.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in April, including 300,000 bpd of condensate, a lighter form of oil. Overall exports have since fallen to 1.8 million bpd, according to energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, which estimates volumes dropping to 1 million bpd.

Oil prices in October rallied above $85 per barrel on fears of a steep decline in Iranian exports and have fallen since then. On Wednesday, oil slipped after U.S. crude output hit another record and domestic inventories rose more than expected.

Asked if the administration had a target in reducing Iranian oil exports in the next six months, Hook said, "I can't tell you what our target is; we do have a target." He added that the ultimate aim was to halt Iranian exports entirely.

He said the United States expected increased global oil supply in 2019, surpassing demand, which would better position Washington to ask Iranian oil importers to reduce purchases to zero.

Washington's "maximum pressure" strategy would also apply to the escrow accounts holding Iranian oil revenues, Hook said, adding that the Treasury Department would ensure that the accounts are never used for illicit goods. "We will police these very aggressively," he added.

Hook raised the possibility that countries and port operators could face U.S. penalties for facilitating Iran's "illicit activities" if they allowed Iranian ships access to international waterways and port facilities. Iran regularly shipped "millions of barrels of crude" to Syria in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, he said.

Hook said Iranian vessels would lose access to international insurance markets under U.S. sanctions.

"From the Suez Canal to the Strait of Malacca and all choke-points in between, Iranian tankers are a floating liability," Hook said. "Self-insured Iranian tankers are a risk to the ports that permit them to dock, the canals that allow them to transit and the boat that cross their path. This exposes the entire maritime shipping network to immense liability."

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U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of that nuclear accord, which curbed Iran's atomic activities in return for sanctions relief, in May, saying it did not go far enough.

U.S. special envoy for Iran Brian Hook said on Wednesday that Washington now wanted to negotiate a treaty that included Tehran's ballistic missile program and its regional behavior.

Hook said the new deal that Washington hoped to sign with Iran would not be a "personal agreement between two governments like the last one; we seek a treaty."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to Twitter to dismiss the characterization of the last deal as a "personal agreement," saying it was "an int'l accord enshrined in a U.N. [Security Council resolution]."

"U.S. has violated its treaty obligations too. Apparently, U.S. only mocks calls for peace," he added in the message that was attached to a video of a protester who took to the stage after Hook's speech, shouting that sanctions were hurting the Iranian people.

The five other world powers that signed the 2015 accord with Iran – France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia – have been trying to salvage it, saying it offers the best chance to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb. Tehran says its nuclear work is for electricity generation and other peaceful purposes.

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Iran has rejected U.S. attempts to hold high-level talks since President Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers earlier this year.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listed a dozen demands in May that he said could make up a new agreement, although Hook's reference to a treaty, which would have to be approved by the U.S. Senate, appears to be a new focus.

"The new deal that we hope to be able to sign with Iran will not be a personal agreement between two governments like the last one. We seek a treaty," envoy Brian Hook told an audience at the Hudson Institute think tank.

Among Pompeo's demands was the release of Americans jailed by Tehran, an end to Iran's nuclear and missile programs and for Iran to withdraw its forces from Syria and Yemen and end its financial support of sides in those conflicts.

But Hook acknowledged Iranian leaders have not been interested in talks despite statements by Trump this year that the administration was willing to meet.

The 2015 deal was an executive agreement that was not ratified by the U.S. Senate. It covered only Iran's nuclear program.

A U.S. treaty would require approval by the Senate.

Some opponents of the nuclear agreement have argued that former U.S. President Barack Obama, who spearheaded the nuclear deal efforts, allowed Trump to unilaterally withdraw from the agreement by failing to seek Senate approval for the deal when it was reached.

"They did not have the votes in the U.S. Senate so they found the votes in the U.N. Security Council. That is insufficient in our system of government if you want to have something enduring and sustainable," Hook said, adding that Washington hoped recently re-imposed U.S. sanctions would force Tehran to negotiate.

Iran views the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement as an act of bad faith and has long blamed Washington for stoking instability in the Middle East. It has said Trump's offer to negotiate contradicts his actions and accused Washington of trying to unseat the current regime.

Trump will chair a session on Iran during the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York next week. In July, Trump said he was willing to meet Iran's leaders "anytime they want" prompting speculation that a meeting might take place at the U.N. next week.

"The ayatollah [Ali Khamenei], the president [Hassan Rouhani] and foreign minister [Mohammad Javad Zarif] have all indicated they are not interested in talking," Hook said.

"We respect that though that does not change our plans. We have a sanctions regime that is underway, stronger measures are yet to come," he added.

Hook said the administration was expanding its diplomatic efforts to ensure that purchases of Iranian oil are drastically reduced by Nov. 4 when Washington reimposes oil sanctions against Tehran.

Hook said Iran posed an international threat to peace and security that went beyond the six world powers that were involved in the original nuclear deal. However, European and Asian countries have been trying to salvage the nuclear deal despite new U.S. sanctions against Tehran.

"If we want to have a stable and prosperous Middle East, it starts with constraining Iran," Hook said.

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