“Assassination Plot Leader Was Actually a U.S. Citizen — Now Eliminated”

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump had gotten the “last laugh” after the U.S.

military killed an Iranian official who ‌led an effort to assassinate him.

Hegseth used unusually colorful language to describe the four-day-old war on Iran and invoked Trump’s name repeatedly as he said the Pentagon could sustain activity as long as necessary.

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“They are toast and they know it. Or at least soon enough they will know it,” Hegseth said of Iranian leaders. “America is winning – decisively, devastatingly and without mercy.”

Hegseth, who wore a red-white-and-blue tie and pocket square, described the killing of an unnamed Iranian who headed a unit that attempted to assassinate Trump in personal terms, even as he stressed the official was not the initial focus of the war.
“Iran tried ⁠to kill President Trump and President Trump got the last laugh,” Hegseth told reporters.

In 2024, the U.S. Justice Department charged an Iranian man in connection with an alleged plot ordered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to assassinate Trump, then U.S. president-elect.

Tehran has denied accusations that it had targeted Trump and other U.S. officials.
Trump cited the alleged Iranian plot when he spoke on Sunday about a joint U.S.-Israeli operation that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying to ABC News: “I got him before he got me.”

Hegseth, however, said Trump never mentioned the effort to track down the plot leader as a priority for the Pentagon.