FBI says it stopped alleged Iranian murder-for-hire plan targeting Donald Trump

The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials

The FBI thwarted an alleged Iranian plot to kill president-elect Donald Trump the week before the presidential election, according to now-unsealed documents from the Justice Department.

A criminal complaint was filed in federal court alleging that an unnamed official from Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed a contact to put together a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.

If the man, identified as Farjad Shakeri, was unable to create a plan by then, the complaint said, the official told him Iran would pause its plan until after the presidential election because the official believed Trump would lose and it would be easier to assassinate him then.

Shakeri told investigators that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him this past September.

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Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including a prominent Iranian American journalist, were also arrested Friday. Shakeri remains in Iran.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

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

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