US President Donald Trump confirmed to the New York Post that he had left clear instructions stipulating that Iran would respond with unprecedented force if it succeeded in any plan to assassinate him. Trump added: "I've been on their list for a long time... but I left instructions, if anything happens to me, to literally bomb them at levels they've never seen before." Trump denied the existence of new Israeli information about a recent plot to assassinate him, but he confirmed that Tehran has been seeking to kill him for years, especially since he ordered the operation in 2020 that resulted in the killing of the commander of the “Quds Force” in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani. Trump's statements come amid a sharp escalation in tension between Washington and Tehran, after banners were raised during the funeral of the late Iranian leader Ali Khamenei threatening to kill the US president, at a time when recent days have witnessed massive US strikes inside Iran, and Trump announced the end of the ceasefire with it. The White House acknowledged that changing the plane that carried Trump on his way back from the NATO summit in Ankara came as a security measure, after Iranian threats to his life.