First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently moved out of his home and onto a military base after Iranian threats against his life, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter. The report did not identify the base or give a precise date for the move.
U.S. officials concluded in recent weeks that Iranian plotting against current and former American officials had reached a more advanced stage, based in part on intelligence about threats to Bessent, the Times reported. The severity of the threats to Bessent was not immediately clear, and the report does not establish that a plot was stopped or that an attack was attempted.
A Treasury Department spokesperson told the Times that Bessent "will not be deterred by the Iranian regime's threats" and remains committed to the administration's campaign to squeeze Iran's economy. The department's statement did not confirm the reported relocation.
Bessent has led the economic pressure campaign against Tehran since August, using tougher sanctions and restrictions on trade routes to isolate Iran financially. He announced the campaign, Operation Economic Outcast, on August 24, and said on October 1 that Iran loaded zero barrels of crude oil onto tankers in September.
Bessent is the latest senior Trump administration official to leave a Washington-area home for a military base or other protected housing. The Times reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have also moved onto military bases, and Rubio has also received warnings about increasingly aggressive Iranian assassination plots. In an unclassified memo late last month, Rubio warned that Iranian lethal plotting against American citizens had reached advanced stages.
Iran has denied plotting to attack officials and people on U.S. soil. U.S. officials have noted that Iran's ability to carry out large-scale attacks in the United States is limited, but that specific, targeted threats made by Iran against individuals have been deemed serious. Iran has targeted President Donald Trump since January 2020, when he ordered the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, and in 2024 federal prosecutors charged Farhad Shakeri, described as an operative of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, with plotting to kill Trump. In October, Iran's Fars News Agency posted a video threatening Bessent and his husband.