The U.S. war against Iran has driven Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent out of his Washington-area home and onto a military base, putting him on a growing list of senior Trump administration figures under U.S. protection against alleged retaliatory threats from Tehran.
Bessent confirmed the move Nov. 13 in an interview with CNBC, saying Iran is trying to retaliate against him – and other Trump administration officials he did not name – for pressing a war-related economic sanctions effort known as "Operation Economic Outcast."
“I’m not going to be cowered that they have initiated death threats against me," Bessent said. "The other members of the cabinet – we’re not going to be cowered. And it means what we are doing with Operation Economic Outcast is working.”
“President Trump constantly receives death threats,” Bessent also said, adding that the Iran military’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, is acting “like a dangerous cornered animal.”
“So I follow the Secret Service instructions and have moved from my home to a military base,” Bessent said.
Attorney General Todd Blanche has also been living on a military installation in the Washington area for months, according to three sources cited by Fox News Digital. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have also moved into military housing, according to news reports
The relocations – which come as the U.S. war continues into its ninth month – underscore something U.S. national security officials have feared for decades: that the Islamic republic has a global network of assassins, terrorists and other operatives that the IRGC can – and does – deploy against foreign adversaries abroad and on U.S. soil.
“The Iranians have shown both in Europe but also in the U.S. that this is a clear and present danger to U.S. officials,” said Magnus Ranstorp, an Iran expert at the Swedish Defense University who has been studying its global operations since the 1990s. “They have been targeting them and they are using proxies, including organized crime elements, to hit senior officials in retribution” for the U.S. war against Iran and other adversary actions by U.S. allies around the world.
Lina Khatib, an Iranian military expert and visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, said Iran is using proxy networks, including some directly connected to the IRGC, to conduct and plan terrorist activities worldwide, including in the U.S.
Despite efforts to counter them by the United States and its allies, Iran “continues to have the capability to do so,” Khatib said. “As military, economic, and diplomatic pressure on Iran mounts, the activation of networks is one way in which the Tehran regime is trying to pressure its adversaries.”
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