“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’ve uncovered brazen acts by Iran to exact revenge against individuals in the US”
In 2011,for instance,the FBI and Justice Department revealed a disrupted plot engineered 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 around Iranian-American journalistMasih Alinejad’s Brooklyn neighbourhood with a loaded assault rifle and dozens of rounds of ammunition,in what appeared to be a threat to her life. The FBI disrupted an earlier Iranian plot to kidnap her from the US last year.
In his own statement,Bolton thanked the FBI and Justice Department for their work in developing the case and the Secret Service for providing protection.
“While much cannot 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 request for comment.
The unsealing of the complaint comes two days after negotiators seeking to revive the Iran nuclear accord in Vienna closed on a “final text” of an agreement,with parties now consulting in their capitals on whether to agree to it.
The 2015 deal granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for tight curbs on its atomic program. Since the US withdrew from the agreement under President Donald Trump,Iran has sped up its nuclear enrichment program. Bolton has been among the most hawkish critics of the deal and efforts by the Biden administration to rejoin it.
In his statement,he said “Iran’s nuclear-weapons and terrorist activities are two sides of the same coin” and asserted that America re-entering the failed 2015 Iran nuclear deal would be an unparalleled self-inflicted wound,to ourselves and our closest Middle East allies.”
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Poursafi’s current location is unknown,and it is not clear when or if he will be taken into custody. He faces charges of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and attempting to provide transnational support to a murder plot.
The Revolutionary Guard is a paramilitary organisation formed in the wake of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend its clerically overseen government. The Quds Force is the Guard’s expeditionary unit,responsible for operations abroad.
Soleimani was the head of that force,and the Defence Department said at the time of the January 2020 strike that it killed him because he “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”
Iran rejected as “baseless” the United States charging 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 said,according to Iranian media.
AP,Reuters
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