The shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner has exposed a serious security vulnerability surrounding President Donald Trump and other senior U.S. officials, a former Defense Department intelligence officer has warned.

And with tensions between Washington and Tehran rising and ceasefire talks stalled, Andrew Badger told Fox News Digital the April 25 breach could further increase Iran’s “motivation” to target Trump and others in the administration.

“This could show that there is a vulnerability in terms of potentially accessing President Trump or senior officials,” Badger said before warning of “significant vulnerabilities.”

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“When you’re looking at your adversary, and you’re seeing weakness, it also fuels motivation,” he said before claiming that “Iran has the motive to strike at senior Trump officials, including President Trump.”

“Iran, which has a demonstrated history of using criminals and proxy individuals, could certainly look at this as an opportunity.”

Chaos broke out at the Washington Hilton Hotel when a suspected gunman, identified as 31-year-old Cole Thomas Allen of Torrance, California, stormed a security checkpoint and opened fire.

Trump and other administration officials were rushed out of the ballroom as law enforcement responded. Allen is currently in custody and made an initial court appearance on Monday.

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The gathering included Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, journalists and senior administration officials — a concentration of leadership that Badger said presented significant risk.

“The top three of the line of succession were at this single event,” Badger noted.

He added that “eight of the nine line-of-succession officials were at this single event,” warning of a worst-case scenario: “If this individual would have somehow worn a suicide vest, you could have eliminated all three of those individuals.”

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“Imagine if there were multiple people. Imagine if he was wearing suicide vests. Imagine if he used some type of drone,” Badger said, emphasizing the scale of potential exposure at a nonsecure venue.

The incident, he said, unfolds against the backdrop of ongoing tensions with Iran, which have escalated amid U.S. and Israeli targeting of Iranian officials and leadership.

Badger pointed to longstanding Iranian hostility tied to the 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport ordered by Trump.

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“There has been a driving animus, a driving motivation in the Iranian regime — which they’ve stated publicly — to get revenge for that killing of Soleimani,” said Badger, who served on the front lines of human intelligence operations, including a 2014 deployment to Afghanistan.

After Soleimani was killed, Ayatollah Khamenei warned that those responsible for the attack would face “severe revenge,” adding that the death would strengthen and intensify resistance against the United States and Israel.

Badger warned that Iran and other adversaries have increasingly relied on unconventional tactics. “Iran and other state actors such as Russia have increasingly reverted to contracting criminals, or gangsters, to conduct hybrid warfare,” he said.

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Following the incident, Trump underscored the need for more secure venues, advocating for a dedicated White House ballroom.

“It’s got every single bell and whistle you can possibly have for security and safety… It’s really what you need,” Trump said on Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing.”

Head of Indonesia’s national rescue agency says efforts continue to remove people trapped in wreckage after crash.

⁠At least ⁠⁠five people have been killed and dozens injured in a collision involving two trains near the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, with reports of passengers being trapped in the wreckage, as rescue efforts continue.

The crash late on Monday night occurred at Bekasi city’s rail station, adjoining Jakarta, between a commuter line train and a long-distance train, the spokesperson for the commuter line operator, Karina Amanda, told the Reuters news agency.

Emergency workers were still actively working at the scene in the early hours of Tuesday morning, with one official telling the AFP news agency that at least four people remained trapped alive in the wreckage of the crash.

“Currently, there are five victims. And, of course, the evacuation process will continue, so the exact number of victims has not been determined yet,” Mohammad Syafii, the head of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS), said early on Tuesday, according to Indonesian news outlet Kompas.com.

Syafii said efforts to rescue those still trapped in the wreckage were complicated by the limited space in which rescuers were working and the severe damage to the train carriages.

Emergency workers are working “slowly” to cut away wreckage and free those trapped inside the mangled carriages, Syafii said, according to Kompas.com.

Rescuers were seen using angle grinders to cut through the metal framework of train compartments to free passengers, according to reports at the scene of the accident.

Anne Purba, the spokeswoman for the state-owned railway operator KAI, also said that five people had been killed, and that 79 people were “still at hospitals for observation”, according to AFP.

Franoto Wibowo, a spokesman for KAI, said a taxi appears to have clipped the commuter train on a level crossing, causing it to come to a standstill on the tracks, where it was then hit by the long-distance train.

Kompas.com identified the trains involved as the Jakarta to Cikarang commuter train and the Argo Bromo Anggrek long-distance train, which is described as Indonesia’s premier high-speed train service between Jakarta and Surabaya.

Train accidents are not uncommon on Indonesia’s rail network.

In 2010, a train from Jakarta ploughed into the rear of a train that was sitting at a station in Central Java province, killing 36, and in 2015, a passenger train hit a minibus at an unguarded crossing in West Java, killing 18 people.