Troubling security information reached the upper tier of Trump’s team on July 7, the first day of the NATO summit. Hosted by Turkey for the second time in history, the 36th NATO summit in Ankara (July 7 – 8) came at a critical moment. As President Donald Trump’s motorcade rushed through Turkey’s capital to the airport, his security team had an urgent decision to make.
In July of this year, Israel shared intelligence with the U.S. – Iran had hatched a new plan to kill Trump. The threat uncovered would involve Iranian proxies launching a lightweight, shoulder-fired missile at Trump’s plane as he departed Ankara. Since the joint US-Israeli strikes in February that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and scores of other senior Iranian officials, a revenge plot to kill Trump cannot be ignored.
In a worst-case scenario, a militant would evade tight security at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit, stand about a half-mile away from the airport and use a man-portable air-defense system, or Manpad, to strike the Air Force One. It may sound like a Hollywood movie. But if the assassination happens, it would be a huge humiliation and defeat to the U.S.
While the plane would later be accompanied by jet fighters in the air, the aircraft would have been vulnerable as it took off under such a scenario. Some U.S. officials thought the alleged plot was impractical, implausible, even impossible. Turkish officials would later tell regional counterparts that they found no evidence Trump was ever in danger of a Manpad attack.
But with little time to confirm incoming details and the U.S. in the middle of a war with Iran, the Secret Service took no risks and devised a plan that seemed ripped from the pages of a political thriller. After all, these are not the first assassination attempts on the POTUS. U.S. officials for years have accused Iran of seeking to assassinate Trump
After exiting his limousine, Trump could be seen boarding a legacy version of Air Force One. However, the Commander-in-Chief secretly – without reporters or some senior White House officials aware of his movements – exits with help of a catering truck which was raised to plane on far side. Then, the truck – with label Turkish DO & CO – drove away from Air Force One to a nearby Air Force C-32A plane.
A few top aides, including his favourite personal assistant Natalie Harp, joined him. Along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, they would ride the smaller aircraft to a military base in the U.K. before secretly transferring back through a different entrance to the original Air Force One after the jumbo jet landed. Trump then walked down the stairs as though he had been onboard all along.
For the final leg back to the U.S., Trump flew aboard a third plane, his preferred Qatari-gifted jet, for a more luxurious ride home. The ruse was carried out with Cabinet members, some White House staff and reporters aboard the old Air Force One. All hell broke loose when news media discovered that a dozen reporters were left on the decoy plane as potential target. But Trump has defended the switch.
All three planes involved in the dramatic ruse to evade an Iranian threat, including the Qatari Air Force One, departed and landed at the Mildenhall military base in England. The new jet landed at 6:26 p.m. local time, followed by the C-32A landing at 10:20 p.m. and the old Air Force One landing nine minutes later.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were aboard the older Air Force One jet. Rubio was aware of the switch and the potential threat against Trump. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and White House communications director Steven Cheung were also aboard the older plane. The two Cabinet members are fourth and fifth, respectively, in the presidential line of succession.
The clever trick has earned Trump praise, mostly from political allies, for outsmarting an adversary that has placed a US$10 million bounty on his head. Yet, critics have posted AI-generated pictures online of Trump cowering in the catering truck, cutting against his promoted image of a wartime leader who has survived three shooting attempts.
The president said he had no choice but to obey his security team. “It’s really just up to Secret Service,” – Trump told reporters Tuesday night. “I go by the Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, for safety.” Trump argued that the plane he flew on was “at greater risk.” But he said he was never worried during the incident.
The White House didn’t plan to disclose the ploy – until the Washington Post revealed it and sparked a media frenzy. An angry press is demanding answers on why reporters weren’t told of Trump’s plane transfer or whether their presence aboard the supposed Air Force One put them at serious risk. Government security experts have said such measures are not unusual when a president travels in or near a warzone.
Trump’s team had actually scrambled jet fighters to accompany the plane the president left behind, officials said. A U.S. official defended the response, noting the daily dangers Trump faces and said the threat revealed by the intelligence was serious enough for the Secret Service to greenlight the decoy plan and send the warplanes.
Past presidents have travelled to places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine under cover of secrecy – but never without at least some prior knowledge by media outlets, under agreements that they would not disclose the movement until after the fact. The maneuver, however, could send the wrong message that the Trump administration was genuinely terrified of an Iran-linked assassination, even in a friendly nation Turkey.
“It’s quite extraordinary that the president had to be smuggled onto a different plane after a NATO summit in a NATO country,” – said Holly Dagres, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. “While the Trump administration touts the weakness of the Islamic Republic, its reach remains extensive enough to allegedly try and kill the most heavily protected leader in the world.”
{ No Room For Error }
Some of the president’s aides had worried about flying into Turkey in advance of the trip, particularly on the Qatari-gifted jet, which has fewer defensive capabilities. Trump didn’t share those concerns and wanted to fly the plane overseas, a senior administration official said.
Israel collected intelligence about Iranian proxies discussing killing Trump while he was in Turkey. The information shared with the U.S. was vague and not deemed entirely credible by many members of the president’s staff. Some suspected that Israel, which routinely shares intelligence with the U.S., was trying to spur Trump into escalating the months-long war with Iran.
Hours later, the U.S. gathered its own intelligence about the Iranian missile threat. American officials had doubts about the alleged scheme, as there was no evidence the militants had the required missile or firing system in Ankara. It would be hard to penetrate the heavy security perimeter around the summit and Trump, the U.S. officials assessed, especially with such a conspicuous weapon.
But a constant stream of threats against the president, a tense war with Iran and a troubling intelligence picture left no margin for error on a short timeline. “This particular case, the Israeli Mossad was one of the reasons that they knew that the plot was real,” – U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Tuesday. So, the Secret Service dug into its playbook of tricks to protect Trump in Turkey.
In 2000, then-President Bill Clinton flew to India from Pakistan in an unmarked plane, landing shortly after the traditional Air Force One jet landed. Two years later, Vice President Dick Cheney boarded Air Force Two in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, during a swing through the Middle East to build support for President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy. But Cheney stealthily switched to a C-17 transport plane, which then traveled to Bahrain.
In each case, the Secret Service determined the elected leaders faced significant threats in transit. John Kirby, a senior White House, Pentagon and State Department spokesman in the Obama and Biden administrations, said Trump’s staff was right to take all necessary measures to protect him, though they could have informed the press about the ploy and embargoed any reporting until the president was out of harm’s way.
“The press would have obliged the ground rules. The last thing they would ever want to do is put anyone’s lives at risk, and in this case even their own. They also deserved – as did the unwitting staffers on the plane – the opportunity to make alternative travel plans,” said Kirby. “It is unconscionable that aircrew and passengers were allowed to fly in that aircraft at that particular moment, ignorant of the danger they were in.”
{ The Risks Are Real }
Trump has raged in recent weeks, personally ordering the subpoenas of journalists at the New York Times for reporting that his Qatari-gifted Air Force One plane didn’t have certain countermeasures against possible aerial threats. Crucially, Trump and his staff have learned to take special precautions because of threats from Iran for years.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump’s circle dealt with cyberattacks and serious threats to their physical safety and Trump’s plane. The Iranian government ordered an operative to assassinate Trump before the election, and former officials at the time described serious warnings from the Secret Service about drones following them or the risk of poisoning.
In recent weeks, the Iranians have sought to disrupt the administration by hacking cellphones of top aides. Beyond the president, current and former senior Trump administration officials have also been notified of specific threats against them and have taken extra safety precautions. Those concerns fit with a years-long effort to better protect the president during his flights.
In 2023, during the Biden administration, the Air Force started removing the tail numbers from some of its planes to make them more difficult to track. But these planes often electronically transmit their information, which can be seen by other aircraft and flight-tracking websites.
Trump’s jet out of Turkey – a smaller and militarized Boeing 757 sometimes used to transport the vice president or defense secretary – didn’t use the famous call sign “Air Force One” to indicate the president’s presence onboard. It also didn’t transmit its position, according to flight trackers, secrecy that would have afforded the president some protection.
Another advantage of flying Trump in the smaller two-engine plane would have been a lower heat signature than the larger Boeing 747 jets, in theory making it less vulnerable to certain surface-to-air missiles, like Manpads. At the funeral service for Khamenei, held the day before Trump departed Turkey, demonstrators carried a banner that read “#KillTrump”.
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August 14th, 2026 by financetwitter
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