India, July 11 -- US President Donald Trump's disclosure that he has left "instructions" for a devastating bombing campaign against Iran if he is assassinated marks an extraordinary public turn in a threat assessment that has been building for months, one shaped by fresh Israeli intelligence, a hastily swapped Air Force One, and scenes from Tehran of mourners chanting for the American president's death at the funeral of the Islamic Republic's slain supreme leader.

"I've been on their list for a long time. That's what we're dealing with," Trump told the New York Post's Caitlin Doornbos in a phone interview published Friday. "The only thing is, I've left instructions, if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they've ...