A senior Iranian lawmaker announced Thursday that Iran’s parliament is advancing legislation to offer a €50 million ($58.13 million) government reward for the assassination of President Donald Trump. Ebrahim Azizi, chairman of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told Iranian state television that the bill is part of a broader package of military and security countermeasures developed since the outbreak of the March war. The measure, if passed, would legally obligate the Iranian government to pay the reward to any person or organization that kills Trump.
Azizi named two additional targets alongside Trump: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the commander of US Central Command.
“We believe the vile president of the United States, the ominous and disgraceful Zionist prime minister, and the CENTCOM commander must be targeted and subjected to reciprocal action,” Azizi said. He framed the proposed bounty in explicitly religious terms: “Just as our Imam was martyred, the president of the United States must be dealt with by any Muslim or free person.”
The legislation states that “if any natural or legal person carries out this religious and ideological mission, the government is obliged to pay €50 million as a reward.”
This is a formal legislative proposal, advanced by the chairman of the parliament’s national security committee, broadcast on state television, and framed as both state policy and religious duty.
A Documented Pattern of Assassination Plots
Iran has been running active assassination campaigns against Trump since January 2020, when Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.
The documented plots are numerous and specific.
In November 2024, the US Department of Justice unsealed criminal charges against Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national whom prosecutors said was directed by the IRGC in September 2024 to surveil and kill Trump. When Shakeri told his IRGC handler that the operation would be expensive, the handler replied, “Money’s not an issue.” In October, the IRGC ordered Shakeri to produce a plan to kill Trump within one week, and if he couldn’t, to pause until after Election Day, because the IRGC assumed Trump would lose and become easier to target. Shakeri is believed to be in Iran and remains at large.
In August 2024, Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged Asif Merchant, also known as “Asif Raza Merchant,” a trained IRGC operative who traveled to New York specifically to hire hitmen for political assassinations, including Trump. Undercover FBI agents posed as the hired killers. Merchant paid a $5,000 advance. When one of the undercover officers told him, “Now we’re bonded,” Merchant responded, “Yes, absolutely.” He was arrested before leaving the country in July 2024. A federal jury convicted him in March 2026 of murder for hire and attempting to commit terrorism. He faces up to life in prison.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi said at the time: “This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump. Instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement.”
In 2024, the Justice Department also filed a criminal complaint against an Afghan national who the IRGC allegedly instructed to put together a plan within seven days to surveil and kill Trump. The plot was foiled before any attack could be carried out.
The threats have also been public and brazen. Earlier in March, mass text messages were sent to mobile users across Iran promoting what was described as an “international campaign to reward the assassination of Trump.” Recipients were directed to a website to register their support and confirm via SMS. Tehran-based Didban Iran reported that approximately 290,000 people backed the campaign, with pledged amounts totaling $25 million.
Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a central figure in Iran’s military response to US-Israeli strikes, posted a thinly veiled threat to Trump on X: “Iran doesn’t fear your empty threats. Even those bigger than you couldn’t eliminate Iran. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed last week that the leader of a covert Iranian unit that had planned to assassinate Trump was killed in a recent military strike. “Iran tried to kill President Trump,” Hegseth said at a press briefing, “and President Trump got the last laugh.”
Trump has stated publicly that he left instructions for Iran to be “obliterated” if it assassinates him. “There won’t be anything left,” Trump said.
What Iran Has Made Clear
Iran is institutionalizing assassination as state policy, funding it with public money, and clothing it in the language of jihad, holy war. A government that sends operatives to New York with $5,000 in cash to hire killers, that mass-texts its own citizens to fund a bounty campaign, and that passes parliamentary legislation offering €50 million to whoever pulls the trigger has declared war on the sitting president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel.
