By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
JERUSALEM/TEHRAN/NEW YORK (Worthy News) – Iran ordered the assassination of Donald J. Trump, the staunchly pro-Israel former and future president, according to court documents unsealed Friday.
The revelations against the suspects in an unrelated murder-for-hire plot stem from conversations between the alleged ringleader, 51-year-old Farhad Shakeri, and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Worthy News learned.
Iranian operatives sought to kill now President-elect Trump just weeks before Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election and were “willing to forego other plots against critics of Iran’s Islamic leadership and high-profile targets,” court documents say.
The documents indicate that Shakeri, who said he was in Tehran at the time of the conversations, agreed to speak with the FBI to gain a reduced prison sentence for an unnamed prisoner in the U.S.
Shakeri told the agents that an official with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) approached him in mid-to-late September, asking him to set aside a plot to kill an Iranian dissident and journalist in New York to instead go after Trump.
He said he was asked to provide a plan within seven days and that when he said targeting Trump would be costly, the IRGC official told him, “We have already spent a lot of money … money’s not an issue.”
He also told the FBI that if a plan could not be formulated within the seven-day timeframe, the IRGC official planned to wait until after the U.S. election, reasoning Trump would lose and that it would be easier to kill him.
TALKS WITH FBI
The court documents do not say whether the IRGC or other Iranian authorities authorized Shakeri’s talks with the FBI.
The Iranian mission at the United Nations did not immediately comment.
However, “the charges announced today expose Iran’s continued brazen attempts to target U.S. citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump,” said Christopher Wray, the FBI director.
Tehran has been angered about Trump’s unwavering support for Israel.
It is also furious about his reported plans to hit the Islamic Republic’s oil sector as part of his previous administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign of increased sanctions.
“The month before the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and embarked on a strategy of maximum pressure — Iranian oil exports stood at 2.9 million barrels a day,” said the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
The non-profit neoconservative think tank and lobby group added that from May 2019 to January 2021, that figure dropped to an average of 775,000 barrels a day.
LONG LIST
“Trump’s maximum pressure campaign also led to a decline in non-oil exports, such as petrochemicals, natural gas, and industrial metals. According to the World Bank, Iran’s overall exports declined in 2019 and 2020 by 17.3 and 12.8 percent, respectively.”
Trump is on Tehran’s list of assassination targets that also includes a group of his previous administration’s senior officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, said officials familiar with the situation.
A former Pentagon official told U.S. media that if the president-elect is “going to be hawkish on any particular country, designated major adversaries, it’s Iran.”
“People tend to take that stuff personally,” Mick Mulroy, a former top Pentagon official, said. “If he’s going to be hawkish on any particular country, designated major adversaries, it’s Iran.”
When he takes office in January, Trump will rapidly go after foreign ports and traders who handle Iranian oil, insiders warned.
With news about an apparent Iranian plot against his life, Trump seemed even more less likely to normalize U.S.-Iran relations.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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