The US Department of Justice announced on Friday, November 8, that it had indicted an Iranian agent in connection with a purported plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This is reported by Reuters. According to the department’s statement, Farhad Shakeri, 51, informed the law enforcement officials that he was given a plan to kill Trump on October 7, 2024.
The Ministry of Justice considers Shakeri to be an IRGC agent living in Tehran. According to Shakeri himself, he immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported in 2008 after a robbery conviction. Shakeri is at large and is believed to be currently in Iran.
According to Shakeri, he had no intention of creating an assassination plot under the IRGC’s deadlines. Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Lodholt, two New Yorkers Shakeri met while in jail, are also charged with aiding an Iranian agent in the plot to kill an Iranian-American in New York who was accused of being an outspoken critic of the Tehran government and had previously been the target of a murder.
Prosecutors have not named the case, but it is believed to be journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who has criticized Iran’s laws mandating women to wear the hijab. Four Iranians were accused of plotting to kidnap her in 2021, and a man with a rifle was detained outside the journalist’s residence in 2022.
Relations between Trump and Tehran were uncomfortable. In his first term, he reinstituted strict sanctions against Iran and withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and other countries that restricted Iran’s nuclear program in return for economic advantages. In addition, during the Trump era, the United States eliminated the Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.
In September, US intelligence officials warned then-republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that Iran could be plotting his assassination. Tehran tried to undermine Trump’s chances for re-election.
