Iran state TV airs $10 million bounty on Barron Trump

Iranian state television broadcast a roughly three-minute video targeting Barron Trump, the 20-year-old son of US President Donald Trump, with surveillance-style graphics and a claimed $10 million reward tied to killing him, according to Iran International. The segment aired on Channel 3 and was produced by media affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Millions of FIFA players against Trump are waiting to receive a ten-million-dollar prize from us.

The video carries the title 'Where and how should we kill Barron Trump?' according to a translation by Euronews. It claims to show the location of the university he attends, his escort vehicles and the positioning of his Secret Service detail, and it alleges that his movements have been 'fully monitored.' The opening frames show a masked figure examining photographs and personal data about the president's son.

What the broadcast claims to show

The footage maps places linked to Barron Trump, including Trump Tower in New York and his school campus. It claims Secret Service agents disguised themselves as students at his school in order to blend into his surroundings, according to the Jerusalem Post, which reviewed a copy of the video that circulated online. Stylized graphics simulate the tracking of his location and the people around him.

The segment also claims to have identified Barron Trump's Xbox, Discord and FIFA gaming accounts, along with those of several classmates. It portrays him as spending much of his time in what the narration calls a digital sanctuary, playing Xbox and communicating by voice and text through the console's online system, away from his security detail.

Two people described as classmates were named in the video. One, listed as 'Liam Carter,' appeared to be a fabricated profile. The other, Bo Loudon, is a conservative social media influencer who is publicly known to be a friend of Barron Trump's. The broadcast also attempted to map the wider social circle around him.

The report claims to rely on leaked data said to have come from a girl who allegedly bypassed the Secret Service's protocols, sat with Barron Trump during a private meeting and then passed information to the programme's makers, according to Euronews. The claim is presented without evidence and could not be verified.

Much of the imagery is manufactured. The programme uses AI-generated clips to show Barron Trump in an Arsenal football shirt, a controller in hand, as if caught mid-game, International Business Times reported. Iran International said it could not independently verify the operational claims in the broadcast, which lean heavily on dramatized graphics and offer no evidence that anyone has actually reached the president's son.

The bounty and its wording

Near the end of the segment, the narrator asserts that 'many would be willing' to claim the $10 million reward and carry out an attack. The claim about the bounty could not be independently verified. US intelligence agencies have issued no public warning corroborating it, and there is no confirmation of an active plot against Barron Trump.

Iranian state media figures have framed personal threats against the Trump family through the Islamic legal concept of qisas, or retributive justice. Mohammad-Javad Larijani, a commentator on state television, has described qisas as the Islamic Republic's 'inalienable right.' The same framing has appeared repeatedly on the state broadcaster in recent months.

If we do not carry out qisas on Trump, if we do not punish our leader's killer, the current leader and the leaders of the Islamic Republic will always have to live in hiding.

The broadcast shifts the focus from Trump and the US officials involved in Iran policy toward members of the president's immediate family, Iran International said, calling it a potentially serious escalation in rhetoric. Iranian state media has also aired direct threats against the president himself. On July 15, a billboard in Tehran's Islamic Revolution Square showed Trump apparently dead in a coffin above the words 'We Kill Trump,' written in English.

A sequel to the Melania video

The Barron Trump segment mirrors a video posted in July by the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency, rendered by The Week as 'Where would you kill Melania?' and by other outlets as 'Where to kill Melania.' It detailed the US first lady's movements in New York, drawing on information said to come from several unidentified security networks, and described her interest in fashion and clothing as a 'weak point.'

That earlier video named her hairdressers and clothing designers, listed the stores she frequents and referenced evacuation routes, according to The Week. It called on 'freedom fighters' to target the shops she visits, the Jerusalem Post reported, using the same template of personal detail and dramatized surveillance.

• Both aired on IRGC-linked media and Iran's state Channel 3.
• Both mapped movements and named people close to the target.
• Both relied on unverified data and heavily dramatized graphics.
• Both closed with a warning aimed at Barron Trump.

The Melania video ended with a message aimed at the president's youngest son: 'This is just the beginning. Barron Trump, wait for us.' Styled almost identically, the August broadcast presented itself as the promised sequel.

The videos have appeared as the war between Iran and a US-Israeli coalition grinds on. Trump wrote on Truth Social on August 24 that Iran is 'completely collapsing.' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is preparing new sanctions, called the campaign 'the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary' in a Financial Times opinion piece on August 23. Both men have described it as an 'economic D-Day.'

Threats sharpen since Khamenei's death in February

The rhetoric has intensified since February 28, when joint US-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei along with senior military and political figures. Hundreds of thousands of people attended his state funeral in July, where some hardliners openly called for the American president's assassination, a demand that has now found more focused expression in state television broadcasts targeting his son.

On July 8, the Secret Service pulled Trump from Air Force One in Turkey and moved him to a separate aircraft amid a reported Iranian threat, The Washington Post reported on August 10. Some administration officials and the traveling press pool were not notified of the threat at the time.

US prosecutors have previously charged that Iran sought to kill American officials. In 2022, the Justice Department charged an IRGC member in connection with a plot to assassinate former National Security Adviser John Bolton. In 2024, prosecutors said Tehran had tasked an intermediary with drawing up a plan to kill Trump, a case that contributed to tighter security around him and his family. Both defendants are believed to be in Iran and neither has been tried.

Trump has warned that any attempt on his life would bring a severe response, saying in a January 20, 2026 interview that 'the whole country's going to get blown up.' Iranian officials have cited the January 2020 US drone strike that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport as the motive for revenge.

The Jerusalem Post said it could not locate the original video on Channel 3's platforms. Every account of the segment traces back to a copy posted on X by Niyak Ghorbani, a London-based journalist who opposes the Iranian government, and to a translation by Euronews Persian. The clip spread across both pro-regime networks and anti-government Iranian websites, blurring the line between propaganda and operational signaling.

What US authorities have said

The Secret Service has not commented on the record on the Barron Trump segment. Asked in July about the Tasnim video targeting Melania Trump, a spokesman, Nate Herring, said the agency 'is aware of the video and investigates anything that can be perceived as a threat toward our protectees.' The agency rarely comments on protective measures for specific individuals.

Iran's economy has buckled under the war. Only seven commodity vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz on August 20, compared with more than 130 a day before the fighting began, according to preliminary Kpler data reported by Reuters. The broadcaster itself has faced internal turmoil, with President Pezeshkian's office accusing it in July of censoring a televised interview.