Tensions between Washington and Tehran have reached a new intensity. As U.S. and Israeli military strikes continue against Iran, President Donald Trump and Iran’s new leadership are exchanging escalating public threats, a federal court has convicted an Iranian-linked operative for plotting to kill Trump, and American intelligence agencies have intercepted an encrypted signal that may be ordering Iranian sleeper agents to activate.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said he was “very unhappy” with Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s newly appointed supreme leader, and stated plainly that Mojtaba “will not be able to live safely.” Trump also warned that if Iran moves to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy shipping lane, the United States would respond with “death, flames, and fury,” and would strike “20 times harder” than anything seen so far. He added that Iran’s new supreme leader would not last long without American acceptance of his rule.
Iran’s security chief fires back: ‘Be careful you are not eliminated’
Tehran responded without delay. Ali Larijani, the senior official overseeing Iran’s national security, dismissed Trump’s statements as “hollow threats” and turned the warning around directly: “Those more powerful than you have failed to eliminate the Iranian nation. You should be careful that you yourself are not eliminated.”
The remark was widely read as one of the most explicit threats Tehran has directed at a sitting U.S. president in recent memory.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps added its own warning, stating that if U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran continue, oil shipments across the entire Middle East could be cut off.
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The confrontation has a criminal dimension that has now been resolved in court. Days ago, a U.S. federal jury found Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national, guilty of plotting to assassinate Trump during the 2024 presidential election campaign. Merchant had received training from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
According to the Justice Department, Merchant entered the United States from Pakistan in April 2024, having previously spent time in Iran. In New York, he attempted to recruit an individual he believed could carry out the killing. That person reported the approach to law enforcement.
Merchant admitted under investigation that he had been dispatched to the United States by the Revolutionary Guard specifically to carry out a political assassination, targeting Trump.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stated that the individual who orchestrated the plot was killed in a recent military strike. American national security officials had previously warned Trump’s campaign team that Iran had positioned multiple assassination teams inside the United States.
Khamenei’s son takes power, drawing opposition at home and threats from Israel
After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the Feb. 28 U.S.-Israeli strike, Iran’s 88-member Assembly of Experts, the clerical body responsible for selecting supreme leaders, formally appointed his 56-year-old son Mojtaba Khamenei as successor this past Sunday.
Mojtaba is regarded as a hardliner with deep ties to the Revolutionary Guard, and analysts consider him more ideologically extreme than his father. Iran’s state television reported that he was wounded during what Iranian officials are calling the “Ramadan War” and described him as “a warrior injured in service to the nation.”
Israel has already signaled that succession offers no sanctuary. The Israeli Defense Forces posted on social media that they would “track every successor.”
Inside Iran, the dynastic transfer of power has generated open resistance. Reports indicate that residents in some neighborhoods have been heard shouting “Death to Mojtaba” from their homes, protesting what they regard as a hereditary seizure of theocratic authority.
ABC News reported on March 9 that the U.S. government had issued an alert to law enforcement agencies after intelligence services intercepted an encrypted communication believed to originate from Iran. The signal, transmitted through relay points across multiple countries shortly after Khamenei’s death, appears designed to reach covert recipients holding decryption keys, allowing instructions to be passed to dormant assets without using the internet or mobile phone networks.
Federal agencies have not confirmed the content of the communication, but they have directed law enforcement to increase monitoring of anomalous radio signals.
If the intelligence is confirmed, it would indicate that Iran is preparing to mobilize a sleeper network embedded in Western countries to carry out retaliatory operations.
