President Donald Trump’s shiny new $400 million bribe Qatari-gifted Air Force One is allegedly ready for action, but on the president’s trip to Ankara, Turkey, for the NATO summit, it was nowhere to be seen.

If Trump is to be believed, he left it at Mildenhall Air Force Base in the U.K. “to honor our brave men and women of the Military” because “everybody is so excited.”

Trump then flew on the former (yet apparently still very much current) Air Force One from Turkey back to Mildenhall, claiming it was “for old time’s sake.”

Asked Wednesday why he wasn’t flying on the jet, Trump didn’t answer directly and instead brought up the possibility of Iran assassinating him.

“It’s a very dangerous profession,” Trump said of being president. “I’m number one on the kill list for Iran. They’re lovely people, I’m number one.”

It was the second time he mentioned the possibility he could be assassinated, having earlier bragged about all the Iranian leaders the U.S. has killed.

“I may be gone, too, because I’m their number one target,” Trump posited.

Adding to the mystery, reporters aboard the jet were told to keep the window shades in the press cabin closed as it flew out of Ankara.

The seemingly valid Iranian assassination threat is a more likely explanation for Qatari Force One’s absence from Turkish airspace. Despite having spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars upgrading it for presidential use (the exact figure is classified, but the Air Force said it was less than $400 million), the new jet lacks fundamental security features like in-flight refueling, and likely other features as well.

The “old” jet also has shielded electronics against the electromagnetic pulses from nuclear weapons blasts, advanced systems for encrypted communications, several different countermeasures against missiles, and advanced power generating abilities.

All of which is a more likely explanation for Trump’s continued use of the airframe that first entered service in 1990.