Iran lost top leaders in the war and US ‘humiliation ... a form of revenge’, say experts, after administration’s flight ruse

Since the joint US-Israeli strikes in February that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and scores of other senior Iranian officials on the first day of the war, a revenge plot to kill Donald Trump should not have appeared far-fetched.

But the US administration’s elaborate ruse to spirit Trump off of Air Force One in Turkey last month indicates a credibility to the Iranian threat that has surprised many in Washington – including the Trump aides and journalists left on the jet that may have remained the target of an Iranian missile strike.