Iran's assassination plot against Trump latest attempt to kill Americans on US soil
JERUSALEM - The Iranian regime’s plot to assassinate former President Trump is the latest in a string of attempts by Tehran to lethally target American officials and Iranian American dissidents.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has effectively put bounties on the heads of Trump, his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and ex-National Security Advisor John Bolton for their roles in the U.S. drone strike that eliminated the global Iranian terrorist Qassem Soleimani in 2020.
According to the U.S. government, Soleimani was responsible for the murders of over 600 American military personnel in the Middle East.
Fox News Digital reported on Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security received intelligence from a human source about the planned Iranian assassination of Trump. The Iranian plot is not linked at this stage to the assassination attempt on Trump that the now-dead shooter, Thomas Crooks, carried out in Pennsylvania.
Khamenei, has been described as being hell-bent on assassinating Trump since 2020 following the former president’s order to kill Soleimani in Iraq. In 2022, the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute published an Iranian-produced animation video depicting the targeted assassination of Trump by the Islamic Republic that was uploaded to Khamenei’s official website.
"The Islamic Republic has used everything from lone-wolf radicals to terror proxies to even transnational criminal syndicates to carry out acts of terror, kidnapping, and assassination abroad over the past four decades across four continents," Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.
He continued, "Rather than be made to pay a price for its evolving support for terrorism over the years, Tehran has learned that terrorism allows it a deniable military option that most states will ignore or treat as a law-enforcement matter. The regime has learned how to integrate this threat into its asymmetric arsenal, which also includes long-range strike capabilities, maritime harassment, and cyberattacks."
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Iran has sought to kidnap and murder of Iranian American dissident Masih Alinejad in 2021. In 2023, U.S. Federal prosecutors charged three organized crime members who are linked to Iran’s regime with the plot. Alinejad opposes the clerical regime and campaigns for women’s rights in Iran and the elimination of the mandatory hijab. Iran’s theocratic state also placed former U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook on its assassination list.
Fox News Digital reported on the intensified attempts of Iran’s regime to murder Americans in 2023, including the former commander of the United States Central Command, General Kenneth McKenzie.
Just last year, General Amirali Hajizadeh, who heads Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace unit, said on Iranian regime-controlled TV "We're looking to kill Trump. " He added "Pompeo, McKenzie, and military commanders that gave the order [to kill Soleimani] should be killed."
In 2009, the regime sent operatives to the U.S. to assassinate California resident Jamshid Sharmahd for his opposition to Khamenei’s Islamic regime. Sharmahd was kidnapped by regime henchmen when he was in the United Arab Emirates in 2020 and sentenced him to death on Tuesday on trumped-up charges.
United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace and UANI Senior Advisor Norman Roule said in a joint statement that "UANI has been warning for years about eroded American deterrence against Iran’s regime. That the Islamic Republic reportedly feels comfortable enough to plot to assassinate the Republican presidential nominee and a former U.S. president on American soil is shocking but not surprising."
The UANI representatives complained that the U.S. has not robustly addressed the running list of Iranian assassination plots. "They have gone unpunished aside from strongly worded press statements, symbolic sanctions, enhanced security protocols, and indictments. These are necessary actions but not sufficient ones."
The Islamic Republic denied that it plotted to assassinate Trump. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani stressed that Tehran was not involved in plotting to kill Trump and said such claims were "politically motivated."
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to prosecute Trump for his direct role in the crime of assassinating General Qasem Soleimani," Kanani added.
Wallace and Roule noted in their statement that "If the press reports are correct and this is a serious threat, the United States must let the Iranians know that American military strikes are a potential response. The absence of strong action against Tehran by the U.S. government and its allies has caused Iran to continue to undertake these plots here and in Europe. If we do not do something, they will become a reality."
They urged that the U.S. rescind the visa for Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, who is visiting New York for meetings at the United Nations.