Iran experts expressed extreme alarm Friday as more information emerged about President Donald Trump's frantic escape from a missile threat in a catering container, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Friday.
The ploy to switch planes from Air Force One to another jet amid a threat from Iran has ignited a media firestorm and raised more questions about the current war.
As Trump boarded another plane, which was accompanied by jet fighters, it left the press unknowingly vulnerable on Air Force One with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
"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," according to The Journal.
"There are also growing fears about what the maneuver reveals: an administration genuinely concerned that Iran-linked assassins could, even in a friendly nation, endanger Trump," The Journal reported.
Holly Dagres, an Iran expert at the think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, described why this Trump administration move was so significant.
"It’s quite extraordinary that the president had to be smuggled onto a different plane after a NATO summit in a NATO country," Dagres said.
"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."