$58 Million Bounty on Trump: In a dramatic escalation that threatens to permanently shatter a fragile regional ceasefire, the Iranian parliament is preparing to vote on a provocative bill that would place a formal 50 million euro state bounty on US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The legislative move represents an unprecedented shift from proxy warfare and state propaganda to codified, state-sponsored assassination orders against sitting foreign heads of state.
$58 Million Bounty on Trump: Crowdfunded Retaliation and Cyberbounties
The formal parliamentary bill aligns with a broader, highly coordinated domestic campaign within Iran targeting the US president. It comes just days after Masaf, a prominent pro-regime media outlet, claimed that hardline factions had already independently secured $50 million in private financial resources for an initiative dubbed “Kill Trump.”
Simultaneously, “Handala,” a notorious state-sponsored Iranian cyberwarfare group, announced its own $50 million allocation aimed at the “elimination of the primary architects of oppression and corruption.” The hackers positioned their bounty as a direct, retaliatory counter-offer to the US Department of Justice, which recently posted a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Handala’s members. Handala claimed its multi-million dollar payout is safely waiting via encrypted, anonymous financial channels for any operative who takes “actual action” against Trump or Netanyahu.
A Fatal Threat to the Shaky Ceasefire
The open authorization of state-backed assassination plots marks a risky turning point in the conflict. While indirect proxy networks and religious spies have historically targeted Western leaders, anchoring a multi-million dollar assassination bounty directly into Iranian statutory law severely complicates active diplomatic efforts.
The development lands at an incredibly sensitive geopolitical juncture. Just hours earlier, President Trump announced he was temporarily pausing a massive, pre-scheduled retaliatory airstrike against Iran at the urgent request of Gulf allies—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE—who are desperately attempting to salvage a shaky April ceasefire.
However, Trump previously issued an unyielding warning regarding threats to his life, stating last year that any foreign attempt to assassinate him would result in the US issuing “very strict orders” to “wipe them off the face of the Earth.”
Deadlock in Diplomacy
The bounty legislation coincides with a worsening logjam in backchannel peace talks. While Pakistan continues to act as a primary diplomatic mediator—even deploying thousands of its own troops and fighter jets to the region to deter a broader spillover—the actual substance of the negotiations is flatlining.
Iran recently forwarded an updated peace proposal to Washington, but US officials have flatly dismissed it as an insubstantial rehash of previous demands. Tehran continues to demand severe war compensations and the total lifting of maritime blockades, while refusing to capitulate on its uranium enrichment programs.
Speaking anonymously to Axios, a senior US official expressed grim pessimism regarding the current trajectory: “We are really not making a lot of progress. We are at a very serious place today. The pressure is on them to be responsive in the right way.”
With Trump warning that the military “clock is ticking” and Iranian lawmakers openly funding his assassination, the window for a diplomatic resolution to the war is rapidly closing.
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