Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined CNBC earlier this morning to describe why the Secret Service has relocated him from his Washington, DC, home following Iranian death threats. There was no word on whether these new threats were connected to a plot reported in 2024 to kill then-President-elect Donald Trump and some of his closest allies.
“They have initiated death threats against me,” Bessent said during a CNBC Squawk Box interview this morning. “I’m not going to be cowed.”
Bessent continued, “You know what I got to say, Joe, is F the Iranian leadership. I’m not going to be cowed. They have initiated death threats against me,” adding, “Why am I going to be afraid when our, the brave military personnel in the Gulf, President Trump, constantly receive death threats?”
Bessent described his “Operation Economic Outcast” sanctions campaign against Tehran as working and suggested its effectiveness was likely why Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would be targeting him on US soil.
Bessent bashed The Wall Street Journal for publishing a photograph of his Georgetown house that he said could be geolocated. He said his team asked the outlet’s editor to withhold his home’s location, but the newspaper published it anyway.
“Highly irresponsible and dangerous, and things like that have to stop,” he said.
The IRGC’s plotting to kill Trump and his closest allies dates back to his first administration, when the US military killed Qasem Soleimani, then commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force.
Read: FBI Stopped Iranian Plot To Assassinate Trump
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