Trump: Iran Will Be 'Obliterated' if It Assassinates Me

President Trump said Tuesday that he's given his advisers instructions to obliterate Iran if it assassinates him. "If they did that they would be obliterated," Trump said in an exchange with reporters while signing an executive order calling for the US government to impose maximum pressure on Tehran. "I've left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won't be anything left." The Justice Department announced in federal charges in November that an Iranian plot to kill Trump before the presidential election had been thwarted, the AP reports.

The department alleged Iranian officials had instructed Farhad Shakeri, 51, in September to focus on surveilling and ultimately assassinating Trump. Shakeri is still at large in Iran. The order Trump signed ahead of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restores the "maximum pressure" Iran policy from his first term, reports Reuters. Trump, who said Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, ordered the Treasury and the State Department to pursue efforts aimed at "driving Iran's oil exports to zero."

(More Iran stories.)