Iranian Agent Charged With Plot To Assassinate Former Trump Advisor

WASHINGTON-

An Iranian operative has been charged with a plot to assassinate former US national security adviser John Bolton in alleged retaliation for a US airstrike that killed the country’s most powerful general, offering $300,000 to “ remove” the Trump administration official, the Justice Department said Wednesday. .

Shahram Poursafi, identified by US officials as a member of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, is currently wanted by the FBI on charges related to the assassination-for-hire plot.

Prosecutors say the plan was developed more than a year after Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force and architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East, was killed in a targeted airstrike. while traveling from Baghdad International Airport in January 2020. After the attack, Bolton, who had by then left his White House post, tweeted: “I hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”

The FBI believes that Poursafi was acting on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards when he tried to kill Bolton, according to an affidavit unsealed Wednesday. Law enforcement officials located photographs of Poursafi in uniform and with Iranian and Soleimani banners in the background to support his claim that he is a uniformed member of the Revolutionary Guards.

The Justice Department traces the plot to the fall of 2021, when Poursafi, 45, an Iranian national who authorities say has never visited the United States, asked an unidentified person he met through social media and that he lived in America to take pictures of Bolton for a book he said he was writing.

The person introduced Poursafi to an associate who could take the requested photos and videos. After the two connected, Poursafi encouraged that person, who was actually a confidential source working with the FBI, to hire someone to kill Bolton and offered to pay $300,000 for the job. Poursafi told the person that he wanted “the guy” to be purged or eliminated.

Poursafi provided the person with the Bolton office address, including the name and contact information of someone who worked at the office, the FBI affidavit says.

“This was not an idle threat,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a statement issued by the department. “And this is not the first time we have uncovered brazen acts by Iran to take revenge on people in the US.”

In 2011, for example, the FBI and Department of Justice revealed an Iranian government plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US while the ambassador was in the US.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, called the latest accusations baseless and politically motivated, state media reported.

He said Iran “reserves the right to take any action within the framework of international law to defend the rights of the government and citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

In his own statement, Bolton thanked the FBI and the Justice Department for their work in developing the case and the Secret Service for providing protection.

“While not much can be said publicly at this time, one point is indisputable: Iran’s rulers are liars, terrorists, and enemies of the United States,” he said.

The disclosure of the complaint comes two days after negotiators seeking to revive the Iran nuclear deal in Vienna hammered out a “final text” of a deal, with the sides now consulting in their capitals whether to accept it.

The 2015 deal gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for strict restrictions on its atomic program. Since the United States withdrew from the agreement under President Donald Trump, Iran has accelerated its nuclear enrichment program. Bolton has been among the most aggressive critics of the deal and the Biden administration’s efforts to rejoin.

In his statement, Bolton said that “Iran’s terrorist activities and nuclear weapons are two sides of the same coin” and said that the US rejoining the 2015 deal would be an “unparalleled self-inflicted wound, for us and our allies.” closest in the Middle East”. .”

The Justice Department described Poursafi as a fugitive abroad, but did not elaborate on where he might be located. It is not clear when or if he will be arrested. He faces charges of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and attempting to provide transnational support for a murder plot.

The Revolutionary Guards is a paramilitary organization formed in the wake of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend its clergy-supervised government. The Quds Force is the Guard’s expeditionary unit, responsible for operations abroad.

Soleimani was the head of that force, and the Defense Department said at the time of the January 2020 attack that it killed him because “he was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”


Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Amir Vahdat in Tehran contributed to this report.

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