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President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0is suggesting he has left standing orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran \u201c\u00a0at levels they\u2019ve never seen before\u00a0\u201d if Tehran follows through on its long-standing threats to kill him.<\/p>\n
But the U.S. government has no way to create an automatic, preauthorized \u201cdead man\u2019s switch\u201d that would prompt immediate retaliation.<\/p>\n
Instead, if Trump were killed, the transfer of power to his successor is governed by the\u00a025th Amendment\u00a0and the\u00a0Presidential Succession Act of 1947. Vice President\u00a0JD Vance\u00a0instantaneously would become commander in chief and have authority for any retaliation.<\/p>\n
Under such a scenario, Vance could do exactly what Trump called for, though there also is a chance he could decide not to follow his predecessor\u2019s orders \u2014 or offer a direct response in a different way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. has, for a whole variety of reasons, never utilized a technical \u2018dead man\u2019s switch,\u2019\u201d said Garrett M. Graff, author of \u201cRaven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government\u2019s Secret Plan to Save Itself \u2014 While the Rest of Us Die.\u201d<\/p>\n
The United States does have extensive contingency plans for continuity of government in the event of a nuclear attack or other major catastrophe that wipes out most or all of Washington. But those plans also do not allow for immediately launching retaliatory strikes upon the death of a president, even if that president had demanded that the military be ready to do so.<\/p>\n
Trump nonetheless posted on his social media website Saturday that Iran had made threats \u201cto assassinate, or attempt to assassinate\u201d him and he said 1,000 \u201cmissiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s supreme leader,\u00a0Mojtaba Khamenei,\u00a0said hours later that Iranians would continue to avenge the killing of his father,\u00a0Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The elder Khamenei died in the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes that started the war in late February, and he was mourned in funeral events throughout Iran this week. His son said retaliation \u201cis the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pledge to take revenge for the pure blood of you and all the martyrs of these two wars from the criminal and disgraceful killers,\u201d he said on remarks aired on state television. \u201cThis revenge is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House on Saturday did not immediately answer questions about what would become of Trump\u2019s military orders should he be killed.<\/p>\n
During those recent funeral events,\u00a0mourners repeatedly held posters or banners\u00a0calling for Trump to be killed along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Israel alerted U.S. officials to fresh Iranian plots to kill Trump. The White House has refused to comment, but Trump appeared to reference to such threats in comments during this week\u2019s NATO summit in Turkey, saying, \u201cThey want to take out the U.S. leader \u2014 me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabrina Singh, former Biden administration deputy Pentagon press secretary, said \u201cIran wanting to target senior American leaders is something that we know is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to take these as credible threats,\u201d Singh said.<\/p>\n
Trump was targeted in\u00a0two domestic assassination attempts\u00a0during the 2024 presidential campaign and saw a gunman\u00a0storm\u00a0the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner he was attending in April.<\/p>\n
The president\u00a0flew part of the way back to Washington\u00a0from Turkey this week aboard an older Air Force One jet rather a new Qatari-gifted\u00a0aircraft, raising fresh security questions about the newer plane. Images of the jet, which was retrofitted at an estimated cost of $400 million,\u00a0show it is not equipped\u00a0with some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems as earlier versions.<\/p>\n
The swap occurred as the U.S. and Iran\u00a0once again began trading strikes, jeopardizing last month\u2019s\u00a0initial deal to end the war. Asked about Iranian threats, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, \u201cI\u2019m No. 1 on their list.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graff said the U.S. prepared years of plans for how nuclear launch authority would devolve in the event of a surprise attack. That included, during 30 years of the Cold War, the country keeping fleets of airborne command posts flying 24 hours a day with a general aboard one of them who could take over nuclear launch orders in the event Washington was lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I believe Trump is saying is that he\u2019s left standing orders to attack if he\u2019s killed, e.g., that the Pentagon should proceed with standard launch protocols,\u201d Graff said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of reason to doubt the legality of such standing orders, since in the event of a president\u2019s death, the nuclear launch authority would immediately pass to the vice president or designated successor \u2014 and ultimately it would be up to him or her to determine whether to proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s post only refers to firing missiles at Iran, which the U.S. has done scores of time since its war with Iran began. He did not expressly threaten involving nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Graff said that, in addition to leaving standing orders in case of his death, Trump also might say \u201csomething to Vance like, \u2018If I\u2019m killed, nuke Iran,’\u201d and that would make \u201dmore sense and would be absolutely legal\u201d<\/p>\n
Washington receiving credible threats against the president and top U.S. leaders from Iran and other foreign adversaries is not uncommon and is often disclosed via national security briefings or other classified means. But far less common is Trump declaring publicly that he personally has been targeted by Iran.<\/p>\n
Still, this is not the first time Washington has threatened Iran over threats against Trump.<\/p>\n
In 2022, the Biden administration warned Iran against attacking U.S. citizens after the Justice Department\u2019s disclosure that a member of Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had planned to assassinate John Bolton, Trump\u2019s first-term national security adviser. Now a Trump critic, Bolton last month\u00a0pleaded guilty\u00a0to illegally retaining classified documents in a case led by Trump\u2019s Justice Department.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden\u2019s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in 2022 that \u201cshould Iran attack any of our citizens, to include those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years later, in the heat of Trump\u2019s campaign against Democrat Kamala Harris, Biden\u2019s vice president, the Biden administration again quietly warned Iran. This time, officials made clear that an attack on Trump would be considered an act of war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Trump #hints #dead #mans #switch #Iran #assassinates #Vance #call<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0is suggesting he has left standing orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran \u201c\u00a0at levels they\u2019ve never seen before\u00a0\u201d if Tehran follows through on its long-standing threats to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13205,124,1051,1496,445,5509,4907,7240,260,5511],"class_list":["post-11777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-assassinates","tag-call","tag-dead","tag-hints","tag-iran","tag-jd-vance","tag-mans","tag-switch","tag-trump","tag-vance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}