Man charged in alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump

The US Justice Department has charged a man in connection with an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump.

The man said he had been tasked by a government official before the presidential election with assassinating the Republican president-elect.

Investigators learned of the plot to kill Mr Trump from Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in American prisons for robbery. Authorities say he maintains a web of criminal associates who participate in Tehran’s assassination plots.

Shakeri told investigators that in September, a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him to put together a plan within seven days to watch and ultimately kill Mr Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.

Shakeri claimed the Iranian official said that “we have already spent a lot of money” and that “money’s not an issue”.

He told investigators the official told him that if he could not put together a plan within the seven-day timeframe, then the plot would be paused until after the election because the official assumed that Mr Trump would lose and that it would be easier to kill him then, the complaint said.

Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran.

Two other men who were allegedly recruited to participate in other assassinations, including of a prominent Iranian American journalist, were arrested on Friday.

Shakeri, an Afghan national who immigrated to the US as a child but was later deported after spending 14 years in prison for robbery, also told investigators that he was tasked by his Revolutionary Guard contact with plotting the killings of two Jewish-Americans living in New York and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.

The criminal complaint says Shakeri disclosed some of the details of the alleged plots in a series of recorded telephone interviews with FBI agents while in Iran. The stated reason for his co-operation, he told investigators, was to try to get a reduced prison sentence for an associate behind bars in the US.

According to the complaint, though officials determined that some of the information he provided was false, his statements regarding a plot to kill Trump and Iran’s willingness to pay large sums of money were determined to be accurate.

The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Mr Trump’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials, including Mr Trump, on US soil.

US attorney general Merrick Garland said: “There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as … Iran.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray said the case shows Iran’s “continued brazen attempts to target US citizens,” including Mr Trump, “other government leaders and dissidents who criticise the regime in Tehran”.

Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a murder-for-hire plot targeting American officials.

Iranian operatives also conducted a hack-and-leak operation of emails belonging to Trump campaign associates in what officials have assessed was an effort to interfere in the presidential election.

Intelligence officials have said Iran opposed Mr Trump’s re-election, seeing him as more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran.

Mr Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

Mr Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung said the president-elect was aware of the assassination plot and nothing will deter him “from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world”.