Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has served as the President of Iran since 2005, is no stranger to assassination attempts — both real and potentially imaginary. According to a piece in the new issue of The Atlantic, however, the Iranian leader's closest brush with death was entirely accidental. In an excerpt from the forthcoming book, Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, authors Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady reveal that, in September 2006, an American Secret Service agent accidentally discharged a shotgun within feet of Ahmadinejad, near a motorcade parked at the InterContinental Hotel in Manhattan, where Ahmadinejad and his entourage were staying during the United Nations' General Assembly.

You can read the account of the would-be shooting, along with much more from the April issue of The Atlantic, right over here.

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J.K. Trotter