Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad,

Washington, February 16 (RHC)-- Former U.S. President Donald Trump wanted to assassinate Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, reveals a former U.S. deputy national security adviser.

In an interview for the new BBC documentary series 'Trump Takes on the World,' former Deputy National Security Advisor Kathleen Troia McFarland said that Trump had to be dissuaded from ordering the assassination of al-Asad.

As the former White House official recounts, a few weeks after he took office in January 2017, the Republican tycoon insisted that he would "take out" his then-Syrian counterpart after seeing images of an alleged chemical attack blamed by Western powers on the Syrian government.

"I said: 'Well, Mr. President, you can't do that.'  He asked why, and I said: 'well, that's an act of war,'" MacFarland adds, recalling that Trump looked at her angrily and that, at the time, she knew that what Trump wanted to do was to somehow punish Al-Asad and not let him get away with it.

The former official was ousted from office just a few months later amid concerns about her partisanship.

In September 2020, Trump admitted that he intended to assassinate Al-Asad, but reversed his decision due to alleged opposition from then Defense Secretary James Mattis.