Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Iran had attempted to assassinate one of his two sons, disclosing this in a phone interview with Channel 14. “Here is something quite unbelievable… Iran targeted one of my sons. Iran tried to kill, to murder one of my sons,” Netanyahu said, without specifying which son was targeted or offering further detail.
Hebrew media reported that the matter had been under gag order for several months. Channel 12 said Israel’s security establishment has known of the alleged plot for months. Netanyahu’s remarks came as he defended an agreement, reportedly reached in July, to extend Shin Bet security protection for his sons, Yair and Avner, and to grant his wife, Sara, lifetime security coverage regardless of the outcome of Israel’s October 27 election. “So the security they get is not a luxury,” Netanyahu said. Without the protection given his sons, he added, the would-be assassins “would succeed.”
Avner Netanyahu lives in Israel; Yair Netanyahu, known for his hardline social media presence, has spent much of the past several years in Miami. Channel 12 reported that the alleged attempt occurred while Yair was outside Israel, though it did not confirm he was the target. Round-the-clock Shin Bet protection for Yair has drawn criticism given his residence abroad; in 2024, reports placed him in a Miami apartment complex with a chauffeur and two bodyguards from the agency’s elite Unit 730, at an estimated cost to the state of NIS 200,000, roughly $55,000, a month. Shin Bet protection for Sara Netanyahu was first approved in March 2023, after hundreds of anti-government demonstrators gathered outside a Tel Aviv hair salon while she was inside, an episode she said left her fearing for her safety.
Iran has directed similar threats at the family of President Trump. Iranian state television last week broadcast a segment titled “Where and how should we kill Barron Trump?”, produced by IRGC-affiliated media and aired on Channel 3, that purported to detail the location of his university, his escort vehicles, and the positioning of his Secret Service detail, and referenced a $10 million reward for reaching him. The broadcast claimed, without independent verification, that “a girl” had circumvented Secret Service protection to meet privately with Barron Trump and pass information to the program’s producers, and alleged he communicates through voice and text on Xbox away from his security detail. It followed a July broadcast by the IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency titled “Where and how is Melania Trump accessible?”, which listed stores and locations she frequents, described her “fondness for fashion” as “her greatest weakness,” and disclosed details including her security code name, her stylists’ names, and the hospital route designated for use in the event of an assassination attempt. That video closed with a threat directed at Barron Trump as well. In late May, the New York Post reported a separate alleged plot targeting Ivanka Trump. Iranian state media has also targeted the president directly: a billboard in Tehran’s Islamic Revolution Square displayed an image of Trump in a coffin beneath the words “We will kill Trump,” and a separate video purported to map his motorcade route between airports and his homes in Florida and New York, footage the US Secret Service said it was reviewing.
Iranian commentators have tied the threats to the concept of qisas, or retributive justice, framing the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the US-Israeli strikes of February 28 as creating a religious obligation to kill those held responsible. State television commentator Mohammad-Javad Larijani called qisas the Islamic Republic’s “inalienable right,” saying of those responsible for Khamenei’s death, “We will do whatever is in our power, and there is no international legal barrier to stop us.” Fellow commentator Mohsen Ghanbarian said, “If we do not carry out qisas on Trump, if we do not punish our leader’s killer, the current leader and the leaders of the Islamic Republic will always have to live in hiding.” Trump has warned that any attempt on his life would trigger a severe US response, stating on January 20 that “the whole country of Iran will blow up” and that he had issued orders to “wipe the Islamic Republic off the face of the Earth” should such an attempt occur.
Those threats were more than rhetoric. Israel provided intelligence that led the US Secret Service to secretly pull Trump off Air Force One and place him on a different aircraft as he prepared to leave Turkey last month, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing an unnamed American official. The intelligence indicated Iran was developing a plan to strike the president’s plane with shoulder-fired missiles. The operation that followed, now reported in full for the first time, involved an elaborate deception. Trump had flown to the NATO summit in Ankara aboard the newly refurbished jet gifted to the United States by Qatar, its first international trip. Before departing Turkey, he announced he would instead fly home on the older Air Force One “for old time’s sake,” while the Qatari jet made a stop at RAF Mildenhall in Britain so American service members stationed there could tour it. Trump boarded the old Air Force One in Ankara in full view of the press as planned, then was quietly loaded into an airport catering truck, driven out of view of the cameras, and transferred to a smaller military C-32A aircraft parked nearby, which flew him to the same British base before returning him to Washington. The deception was so complete that some of Trump’s own staff, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, boarded the old Air Force One believing the president was aboard, unaware he had already been moved to a different plane. White House communications director Steven Cheung declined to detail the operation, saying only that the new aircraft carries “high-level security protocols” designed to protect the president and his staff.
