The U.S. has announced charges against an Iranian official for allegedly planning to assassinate former President Donald Trump. This move comes amid escalating tensions between the two countries. Read on for details on the plot and its implications.
On Friday, U.S. prosecutors announced charges related to an alleged Iranian plot targeting former President Donald Trump for assassination.
The Justice Department stated that the thwarted assassination plan was purportedly orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as retaliation for the 2020 killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, which occurred during a US strike authorized by then-President Trump.
According to a statement from the department, Farhad Shakeri, 51, is reportedly in Iran and was “assigned” by the IRGC on October 7 to devise a plan to assassinate Trump. This follows Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election.
The agency reported that Shakeri, along with Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36—from New York—were individually charged with conspiring to murder a dissident Iranian-American journalist in New York.
According to the department, Rivera and Loadholt are currently in U.S. custody and appeared in court in New York on Thursday.
FBI Director Christopher Wray stated, “The charges revealed today highlight Iran’s ongoing bold efforts to target U.S. citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, alongside other government officials and dissidents who oppose the Tehran regime.”
The Justice Department referred to Shakeri as an “asset of the IRGC living in Tehran.”
According to the information, he immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported around 2008 after completing a 14-year prison sentence for robbery.
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“According to the Justice Department, Shakeri has recently leveraged a network of criminal contacts he established while in U.S. prison to provide operatives for the IRGC, facilitating surveillance and assassinations aimed at their targets.”
According to the report, Loadholt and Rivera, under Shakeri’s guidance, spent several months surveilling a US citizen of Iranian descent who is an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime and has previously been targeted in multiple murder plots.
She was not identified, but the charges were filed less than three weeks after a Revolutionary Guards general faced accusations in New York for allegedly plotting to assassinate dissident journalist Masih Alinejad, who resides there.
The United States has consistently claimed that Iran is attempting to assassinate American officials in response to the US’s killing of Soleimani.
Earlier this year in New York, a Pakistani man with purported connections to Iran entered a not guilty plea against charges that he attempted to hire an assassin to murder a U.S. politician or official.
The State Department has declared a $20 million reward for information that results in the apprehension of the purported Iranian mastermind responsible for plotting to assassinate former White House official John Bolton.
