President Donald Trump is suggesting he has left standing orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran “at levels they’ve never seen before” if Tehran follows through on its long-standing threats to kill him. The catch is ugly and simple: the U.S. government has no automatic “dead man’s switch” for presidential revenge. If Trump were killed, the 25th Amendment and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 would hand power to Vice President JD Vance, who would instantly become commander in chief and decide whether to retaliate.
That’s the machinery of empire in plain sight. One man talks about posthumous war orders. Another man, sitting one heartbeat away from the office, would inherit the authority to turn those threats into action — or not. Garrett M. Graff, author of “Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die,” put it bluntly: “The U.S. has, for a whole variety of reasons, never utilized a technical ‘dead man’s switch.’”
Who Gets the Power
The White House on Saturday did not immediately answer questions about what would become of Trump’s military orders should he be killed. That silence hangs over a system that likes to dress itself up as orderly continuity while preparing for catastrophe. The United States does have extensive contingency plans for continuity of government in the event of a nuclear attack or other major catastrophe that wipes out most or all of Washington, but those plans also do not allow for immediately launching retaliatory strikes upon the death of a president, even if that president had demanded it.
Trump posted on his social media website Saturday that Iran had made threats “to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate” him and said 1,000 “missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat.” Hours later, Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said Iranians would continue to avenge the killing of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The elder Khamenei died in the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes that started the war in late February, and he was mourned in funeral events throughout Iran this week.
His son said retaliation “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out.” On state television, he added, “We pledge to take revenge for the pure blood of you and all the martyrs of these two wars from the criminal and disgraceful killers,” and repeated, “This revenge is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out.” The language is soaked in blood, but the decision-making still runs through state channels, state television, and state command structures. Ordinary people get the funerals. The rulers get the microphones.
What the War Machine Already Knows
The U.S. has spent years preparing for continuity of command. Graff said the country developed plans for how nuclear launch authority would devolve in the event of a surprise attack. During 30 years of the Cold War, the country kept fleets of airborne command posts flying 24 hours a day with a general aboard one of them who could take over nuclear launch orders if Washington was lost. “What I believe Trump is saying is that he’s left standing orders to attack if he’s killed, e.g., that the Pentagon should proceed with standard launch protocols,” Graff said. “There’s a lot of reason to doubt the legality of such standing orders, since in the event of a president’s death, the nuclear launch authority would immediately pass to the vice president or designated successor — and ultimately it would be up to him or her to determine whether to proceed.”
That’s the real hierarchy: not law as protection, but law as a relay system for violence. Trump’s post only refers to firing missiles at Iran, which the U.S. has done scores of time since its war with Iran began. He did not expressly threaten involving nuclear weapons. Graff said Trump also might say “something to Vance like, ‘If I’m killed, nuke Iran,’” and that would make “more sense and would be absolutely legal.”
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “I’m No. 1 on their list.” He also said during this week’s NATO summit in Turkey, “They want to take out the U.S. leader — me.” The president flew part of the way back to Washington from Turkey this week aboard an older Air Force One jet rather a new Qatari-gifted aircraft, raising fresh security questions about the newer plane. Images of the jet, which was retrofitted at an estimated cost of $400 million, show it is not equipped with some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems as earlier versions.
Trump was targeted in two domestic assassination attempts during the 2024 presidential campaign and saw a gunman storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner he was attending in April. The threats around him are real enough, and so is the apparatus built to answer threats with more force, more secrecy, and more destruction.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Israel alerted U.S. officials to fresh Iranian plots to kill Trump. The White House has refused to comment, but Sabrina Singh, former Biden administration deputy Pentagon press secretary, said, “Iran wanting to target senior American leaders is something that we know is happening.” She added, “You have to take these as credible threats.”
Who Pays for the Order
The people who pay are never the ones making the call. The war started in late February, and the U.S. and Iran once again began trading strikes, jeopardizing last month’s initial deal to end the war. Meanwhile, Washington keeps recycling the same logic: threats justify escalation, escalation justifies more power, and the public gets told this is security.
This is not the first time Washington has threatened Iran over threats against Trump. In 2022, the Biden administration warned Iran against attacking U.S. citizens after the Justice Department’s disclosure that a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had planned to assassinate John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser. Now a Trump critic, Bolton last month pleaded guilty to illegally retaining classified documents in a case led by Trump’s Justice Department.
President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in 2022 that “should Iran attack any of our citizens, to include those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences.” Two years later, in the heat of Trump’s campaign against Democrat Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice president, the Biden administration again quietly warned Iran. This time, officials made clear that an attack on Trump would be considered an act of war.
That’s the trap laid by the state: every threat becomes a pretext, every pretext becomes a warning, and every warning becomes another step toward open-ended violence. The names change. The machinery doesn’t.