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Iran Conflict 2026
7AUG

Majlis reviews €50m Trump bounty bill

3 min read
12:08UTC

Iran International reported on Friday 15 May that the Iranian Majlis was reviewing a bill proposing a €50 million reward for killing US President Donald Trump, framed as retaliation for the deaths of Iranian leaders.

ConflictDeveloping
Key takeaway

Iran International alone reports a Majlis bill proposing €50m for killing Trump; IRNA, Tasnim and Mehr have not corroborated.

Iran International, the London-based Persian-language opposition outlet, reported that the Iranian Majlis was reviewing a bill proposing a €50 million reward for killing US President Donald Trump, framed as retaliation for the deaths of Iranian leaders 1. The bill has not been corroborated by IRNA, Tasnim, or Mehr News Agency as of Saturday 16 May, and the briefing treats it as opposition-source narrative intelligence on hardliner domestic pressure rather than confirmed legislative action.

Confidence: suggested. Iran International is opposition-aligned and operates from London; its reporting on Majlis proceedings has historically run ahead of state-media confirmation on around two-thirds of items, with the remainder failing to corroborate at all. Cross-checking against IRNA, Tasnim and Mehr News through Saturday 16 May produced no parallel coverage. This story sits in the no-corroboration bucket until that changes.

Contextually, the bill would extend a sequence of hardliner Majlis escalations: the 221-0 IAEA suspension vote, the NPT withdrawal bill, and the Hormuz toll legislation that established the PGSA on 5 May . A bounty bill in this sequence is a domestic-political move aimed less at Trump personally than at Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's bilateral diplomatic track, which depends on Tehran being able to credibly receive American counterparts. A formal Majlis bounty would make that mathematically impossible.

Counter-perspective: Western legal scholars including Ryan Goodman (NYU) have observed that even non-binding parliamentary bounty resolutions can satisfy the predicate threshold for the US 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act state-sponsor-of-terrorism designation expansion, giving Washington a fresh statutory escalation pathway it has not previously activated against Iran. The White House presidential-actions index reads zero on Iran through last Wednesday ; the Alaskan senator's AUMF remained unfiled , and the constitutional war-powers timer kept running .

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran International, a London-based Iranian opposition news outlet, reported that Iran's parliament, the Majlis, was reviewing a bill proposing a €50 million reward for the killing of US President Donald Trump, presented as retaliation for Iranian leaders killed since the conflict began. The report has not been confirmed by IRNA, Tasnim, or Mehr News, Iran's main state media outlets. Significant Majlis legislation is routinely covered by state outlets; the silence suggests this is a hardliner proposal at an early stage, if it exists at all. Iran has historic precedent for state-adjacent bodies attaching monetary bounties to named foreign targets: the 15 Khordad Foundation offered $3 million for Salman Rushdie's killing from 1989 onwards. Those precedents produced murders of translators and associates, not the primary target.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    If the bill is confirmed and passed, it would give the Trump administration a domestic political justification for escalating sanctions or strikes that bypasses the congressional AUMF debate and the War Powers Act deadline.

  • Risk

    The bill's publication via an opposition outlet, without state-media corroboration, means it may circulate in Western media in ways that harden US positions in the Pakistan-mediated MOU process regardless of its actual legislative status.

First Reported In

Update #99 · Two Hormuz papers; Washington on neither

Iran International· 16 May 2026
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Causes and effects
This Event
Majlis reviews €50m Trump bounty bill
If confirmed, this would be the first time Iran's parliament formally proposed a bounty on a sitting US president, and would functionally destroy Foreign Minister Araghchi's civilian diplomatic track overnight.
Different Perspectives
Turkiye
Turkiye
Erdogan followed the Pakistani delegation to Jeddah for an instrument that has not been signed. Ankara's entry widens Saudi Arabia's defence architecture beyond the existing Pakistan pact, adding a second non-Gulf military partner mid-conflict.
Oman
Oman
Muscat is the corridor's broker but has published nothing about the arrangement Fars describes on its behalf. The account leaves Oman administering outbound traffic only, a narrower role than the shared route its mediation has rested on since 1979.
Pakistan
Pakistan
Islamabad sent Sharif, Munir and Dar to Jeddah to widen a defence commitment it has honoured in cheaper registers since March, when Dar invoked the Saudi mutual defence pact. Jeddah tests whether that hedge becomes a binding trilateral instrument with Turkiye.
United States
United States
Washington rejected the Majlis Hormuz bill outright while CENTCOM's own tally kept climbing to 49 vessels redirected since 14 July. Both instruments tightened in the same week Trump promised the strait would reopen soon.
Iran
Iran
Iran's foreign ministry is selling a phased Hormuz corridor through Oman and denying any percentage cargo tariff, while its own Majlis is legislating fines to 20% and a bar on Israeli-linked cargo. The two accounts, from the same government, do not agree with each other.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
Riyadh published a target forecast, not an attribution, for the campaign it says the Najran strike previewed. That keeps an Article 51 case available while it formalises a trilateral defence architecture with Pakistan and Turkiye.