Bessent moves to military base, says Iranian threats will not deter him

Scott Bessent, the United States Treasury Secretary, has said that threats to kill him attributed to Iran will not frighten him, even though he has left his private home in Washington and is now living on a US military base. Speaking to the business news network CNBC, Bessent pointed out that American troops serving in the Gulf and President Donald Trump are themselves targets of death threats on a constant basis, The Times of Israel reported, and asked why he should be afraid when they are not.

He nonetheless described Iran as behaving "like a dangerous cornered animal" and said he had followed the instructions of the Secret Service by relocating. The Jerusalem Post reported that Bessent confirmed the move to a military base, and its headline quoted him using an expletive about Iran's leadership: "F the Iranian leaders." Iran has denied that it is planning attacks on officials or other people inside the United States.

Why Bessent says he had to leave home

Bessent placed part of the blame for his relocation on the press. According to The Times of Israel, he said The Wall Street Journal had published an aerial photograph of his house in Georgetown, a residential neighbourhood of Washington, DC, in January 2025. He called the decision to print the image "highly irresponsible and dangerous" and said such publications must stop. The reports do not say whether the newspaper has responded to his criticism.

The Secret Service is the US federal agency responsible for protecting the president and other senior officials. Bessent's account suggests the agency judged his private residence to be an unsuitable location given the threat level, though the reports carry no statement from the Secret Service itself, and they do not name the base he moved to.

The intelligence warning

The comments come against the backdrop of a warning from inside the Trump administration. The Times of Israel noted that a senior intelligence official had written in a memo, which was seen by the Reuters news agency late last month, that Iranian plots aimed at US personnel and American citizens had progressed to an advanced stage. The reports do not identify the official, describe the specific plots or say whether Bessent was named in that memo.

Iran's denial stands against this assessment. The material available does not include any detail on how Tehran phrased its denial or when it was issued, only that it rejects the accusation of plotting attacks on American soil.

Bessent's role in the pressure campaign on Iran

As Treasury Secretary, Bessent heads the department that manages US government finances and administers economic sanctions. According to The Times of Israel, he has been in charge of the American sanctions and economic pressure campaign against Iran, known as Operation Economic Outcast, since August. A Reuters photograph published by The Jerusalem Post shows him at a Treasury Department press conference in Washington on August 24, 2026, where he set out further sanctions against Iran.

That role helps explain why he would be singled out. Sanctions campaigns of this kind aim to cut a country off from international finance and trade, and the official who leads them becomes the public face of the policy. Bessent's framing of Iran as a cornered animal links the threats to the pressure Washington is applying, though he did not, in the reported remarks, spell out that connection in detail.

Why it matters to readers following Israel

Iran is Israel's principal regional adversary, and American economic pressure on Tehran is closely watched in Israel. Accusations that Iran is targeting officials abroad, and Iranian denials of them, are a recurring feature of the confrontation. Bessent's decision to live on a military base marks a visible change in how a senior member of the US cabinet is responding to that threat, while his public remarks were aimed at signalling that the pressure campaign will continue.

What the reports do not say

The reports do not identify which military base Bessent moved to or when exactly he relocated. They give no detail of the threats he has received or how they were communicated. No comment from the Secret Service or The Wall Street Journal has been reported, and the full text of The Jerusalem Post's article was not available, so the context of the expletive quoted in its headline is unclear.