A top member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet has abandoned his Washington-area home as a foreign plot targeting U.S. officials intensifies.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has relocated to a military base following Iranian threats against his life, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the matter.
According to the report, U.S. officials determined in recent weeks that Iran's scheming against current and former American officials had moved into a more advanced phase, a conclusion drawn partly from intelligence about threats to Bessent.
Since August, Bessent has steered the Trump administration's push to cut Tehran off from the global economy through harsher sanctions and limits on trade routes. The Times' sources said that work has put him near the top of the list of officials Iran would most like to harm.
It's unclear how serious the threats against Bessent are. U.S. officials have acknowledged Iran has limited capacity to pull off large-scale attacks on American soil, but they've treated some targeted plots as credible, including an alleged murder-for-hire scheme against Trump during his 2024 campaign.
A Treasury spokesperson told the Times that Bessent "will not be deterred by the Iranian regime's threats" and remains committed to the campaign.
Bessent is far from the first senior Trump official to trade a Washington-area home for a military base or other secured housing. At least six did the same last year, among them Stephen Miller, who is now White House chief of staff, and Pam Bondi, who was attorney general at the time. Threats against Bondi reportedly spiked after U.S. forces seized former President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and flew him to New York to face criminal charges.
Bessent's move comes weeks after the U.S. ordered staff across the Middle East onto heightened alert and began shrinking embassy and consulate staffing, citing intelligence that Iran was well along in planning attacks on Americans.