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Iran Threat to Kill Trump: No Automatic Strike, Vance Decides
The US has no dead man's switch for presidential assassination. Vice President Vance would decide retaliation, leaving markets with binary risk.
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President Donald Trump has publicly claimed he left standing orders for the US military to destroy Iran at levels Tehran has never seen. The government has no mechanism for an automatic, preauthorized retaliation – the Associated Press reported that contingency plans exist but stop short of a dead man's switch. Under the 25th Amendment and the Presidential Succession Act, Vice President JD Vance would become commander in chief the instant Trump died. Vance would hold sole authority over any response. He could follow Trump's orders, or he could choose a different course.
"There's no dead man's switch for a variety of reasons," said Garrett M. Graff, author of "Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself." Graff pointed to legal and practical constraints around any preauthorized strike.
Trump's latest post on his social media platform Saturday evening said Iran had made threats "to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate" him. He claimed "1,000 missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow" if Iran acted. The White House declined to answer questions about what would happen to those orders if he were killed.
The threat environment is escalating. Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said hours after Trump's post that Iranians would avenge the death of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who died in late February during initial US and Israeli strikes. Funeral events this week included mourners calling for Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be killed. "We pledge to take revenge," Khamenei said on state television. "This revenge is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out."