US President Donald Trump will not fly his new $400 million Air Force One out of Turkey as originally planned, opting instead to send the Qatari-gifted jet to Europe rather than risk flying it home amid a sudden reescalation of the conflict with Iran, he told reporters Wednesday at the NATO summit in Ankara.
Speaking at a press conference alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump confirmed the plane’s flight plan had changed but stopped short of directly attributing the decision to Iranian threats. “The life of a president is very dangerous,” Trump said when asked whether security concerns tied to Iran were behind the shift, calling the presidency itself a “very dangerous profession.”
He said the jet would instead travel “to one of the big bases where we can show it to the people,” adding that he would return to Washington “by normal methods.”
The announcement came on a day of rapid escalation between Washington and Tehran, hours after Trump declared that the fragile, three-week-old ceasefire ending the Iran war was, in his words, “over,” and branded the country’s leadership as “evil, sick people.”
Ceasefire Collapses Amid New Strikes and Insults
The diplomatic rupture followed US military strikes on Iranian targets that Washington described as retaliation for attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz earlier in the week, including a strike on the Singapore-flagged container ship Ever Lovely, which American officials blamed on Iran.
Iran responded with strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait, further inflaming a crisis that has repeatedly threatened to unravel the memorandum of understanding reached between the two countries on June 17.
Asked directly about the fate of that framework, which had launched sixty days of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, Trump did not mince words. “To me, I think it’s over,” he said, adding that continuing talks with Tehran was “a waste of time.” He went further in describing Iran’s leadership, saying, “I don’t want to deal with them anymore, they’re scum,” and calling them “sick people” and “vicious, violent people.”
Trump also raised the possibility of reinstating a naval blockade of Iranian ports that had been lifted as part of the original ceasefire agreement. “We may put down the blockade, we may put it back, the blockade, and it’ll only be a blockade for Iran,” he said.
Trump Warns of More Strikes, Says He’s Iran’s “No. 1 Target”
Despite declaring the ceasefire dead, Trump suggested any renewed fighting would be brief and lopsided in America’s favour. “I think it’s going to go very quickly,” he said, describing a pattern of escalating retaliation. “They hit a couple of ships, and so we hit them much harder,” he said, adding that when Iran strikes, the U.S. responds with force many times greater.
Trump was candid about the personal risk he believes the standoff carries. “I’m the number one target… because they’re s–m,” he told reporters in Ankara, adding that Iran’s leadership was gone and musing, “I may be gone too.” He also accused Iranian officials of duplicity in negotiations, saying they agree to terms privately only to reverse course publicly. “They’re cuckoo,” he said. “There’s something wrong with these people.”
Bahrain’s armed forces said in a statement that the kingdom had intercepted multiple Iranian aerial attacks targeting civilians, describing Tehran’s actions as a “systematic hostile approach” and urging residents to avoid handling debris from the intercepted munitions.
Markets Rattled as Oil Jumps 6%
The renewed hostilities sent immediate shockwaves through financial markets. US stocks fell in early trading Wednesday following Trump’s remarks, while oil prices surged roughly 6 per cent on fears that a full reescalation of the conflict could disrupt the flow of crude through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy corridors.
Iran, for its part, has accused Washington of failing to uphold its own commitments under the June agreement, pointing to the continued US naval presence in the region and unresolved disputes over control of shipping lanes through the strait. Tehran has insisted that vessels transit the waterway “under the supervision and management of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” a position the United States has rejected in favour of maintaining open maritime traffic.
A Gift Under Scrutiny Since Its Unveiling
The jet at the centre of Wednesday’s travel decision has been a subject of controversy since Qatar first presented it to Trump in May 2025. Modified from a Boeing 747-8 at a cost of roughly $400 million, the aircraft, designated VC-25B Bridge, took its first official flight as Air Force One earlier this month, carrying Trump to North Dakota for the dedication of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library ahead of the July 4th holiday.
The plane is intended to serve as a stopgap until two purpose-built successor aircraft enter service in 2028, after which Trump has said the Qatari jet will be donated to his presidential library.
Ethics watchdogs have raised sustained concerns about the arrangement. Donald Sherman, president of the government ethics group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has said the president has made clear his willingness to accept gifts from foreign governments even where significant national security interests are at stake, calling Qatar’s gift one of the clearest examples of that pattern. Sherman has argued that an asset with such direct bearing on presidential security is something the US government should fund itself rather than accept as a gift.
Whether Wednesday’s decision to reroute the plane reflects a genuine security calculation or simply new operational caution amid the reignited conflict, the moment underscored how quickly the optimism surrounding last month’s ceasefire has given way to open uncertainty, leaving both the fate of the Iran negotiations and the president’s own return flight home unresolved as the NATO summit continues.
