Trump Feared Getting Assassinated By Iran As Payback For Soleimani's Killing Despite Public Bravado, New Book Says

Former U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly told his friends in December 2020 that Iran could get back at him for the death of Qassem Soleimani, a senior military figure in the Middle Eastern nation, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in January 2020.

What Happened: Trump reportedly told his friends during a cocktail party in Florida that he was afraid Iran would try to assassinate him and so he wanted to go back to Washington, where he would be safer, revealed excerpts from a new book titled 'The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021,' written by New York Times correspondent Peter Baker and his wife and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, The Guardian reported. 

According to The Guardian report, the book will be published in the U.S. next week.

In June 2019, Trump agreed to conduct air strikes on Iran but called it off at the last minute, with the authors stating in the book that many, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, warned against it.

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Trump authorized strikes six months later, and Soleimani was killed on Jan. 3, 2020, when he was leaving Baghdad airport.

Following the killing, Trump said at a rally in Ohio that it was an act of “American Justice.”

“Soleimani was actively planning new attacks and he was looking very seriously at our embassies, and not just the embassy in Baghdad, but we stopped him and we stopped him quickly and we stopped him cold,” he reportedly said.

Baker and Glasser contend in the book that Trump feared for his life, especially after Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted that Soleimani's killing would be avenged.

Trump promptly returned to Washington and swiftly “turned up the heat on Mike Pence," urging him to block electoral college results confirming President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential polls, the authors reportedly wrote in the book.