“This was not an idle threat,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a statement released 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 the Department of Justice revealed an aborted plot designed by the Iranian government to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US while the ambassador was in the US.
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A source in Mike Pompeo’s circle told a CNBC reporter that the former secretary of state had also been targeted for assassination by Iran.
Also, federal prosecutors in New York charged a man last month with driving through Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad’s Brooklyn neighborhood with a loaded assault rifle and dozens of rounds of ammunition in what appeared to be a threat for his life. The FBI disrupted an earlier Iranian plot to kidnap her in the United States last year.
In his own statement, Bolton thanked the FBI and the Department of Justice for their work in developing the case and the Secret Service for providing protection.
“While not much can be said publicly right now, one point is indisputable: Iran’s rulers are liars, terrorists and enemies of the United States,” he said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The announcement 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 parties now consulting in their capitals whether to accept it.
The 2015 deal granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for tightening its nuclear program. Since the US withdrew from the deal under President Donald Trump, Iran has accelerated its nuclear enrichment program. Bolton has been one of the harshest critics of the deal and the Biden administration’s efforts to join it.
In his statement, he said that “Iran’s nuclear weapons and terrorist activities are two sides of the same coin” and asserted that a US return to the failed 2015 Iran nuclear deal would be a unparalleled self-inflicted wound, to ourselves and to our nearest center. Eastern Allies”.
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Poursafi’s current location is unknown and it is unclear when or if he will be arrested. He faces charges of using interstate commercial facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and attempting to provide transnational support for a murder plot.
The Revolutionary Guard is a paramilitary organization formed in the wake of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend its clerically-supervised government. The Quds Force is the expeditionary unit of the Guard, responsible for operations abroad.
Soleimani was the head of that force, and the Defense Department said at the time of the January 2020 strike that it killed him because he “was actively developing plans to target American diplomats and service members in Iraq and the whole region”.
Iran rejected as “baseless” the United States accusing the Iranian.
“Iran strongly warns against any action against Iranian citizens under the pretext of these ridiculous and baseless accusations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
AP, Reuters
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