IRGC Agent Responsible For Trump's Assassination Attempt Is An Afghan, Says US

The US Department of Justice announced that Farhad Shakeri, who was assigned by Iran to assassinate Donald Trump, is an Afghan.

According to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) official ordered Shakeri last September to prepare a plan to kill Trump, the department said in a statement.

The US Department of Justice on Friday announced criminal charges related to the foiling of the Iranian government's plot to assassinate Donald Trump before the recent election.

In a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, the department said in a statement on Friday, November 8, that an unnamed IRGC official had instructed a liaison, Farhad Shakeri, last September to prepare a plan to monitor and ultimately kill Trump.

According to the US Department of Justice, the IRGC official told Farhad Shakeri that if he could not assassinate Trump before the election, it would be postponed until after the presidential election, because he claimed that Trump would lose the election and it would be easier to assassinate him.

US prosecutors said that Shakeri was initially tasked by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with carrying out other assassinations against US and Israeli citizens inside the United States, but IRGC officials told Shakeri to focus only on Trump.

According to the US Department of Justice, Farhad Shakeri is an IRGC operative based in Tehran. He immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported from the United States around 2008 after spending 14 years in New York prisons for robbery.

The Justice Department statement said that Shakeri told the FBI in a recorded interview that he did not intend to present a plan to kill Trump within the seven-day deadline given to him by the Revolutionary Guard official.

Shakeri informed law enforcement agents that he had been tasked with hatching a plot to assassinate Donald J. Trump, the president-elect. He also announced that he was obliged to spy on two Jewish American citizens living in New York, and that a Revolutionary Guard official had offered $500,000 for the murder of each of them. He was also tasked with targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.

The US Department of Justice on Friday charged three people with assassinating US citizens, including conspiracy to assassinate Trump.

Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, known as "Pop," of Brooklyn, NY, and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, NY, were charged with involvement in the plot to assassinate a US citizen, according to a statement from the US Department of Justice.

"Loadholt and Rivera, for months, monitored an Iranian-American citizen living in the United States on Shakeri's orders," the statement said, referring only to the "victim-1" and saying that the person was an outspoken critic of the Iranian government and that the Islamic Republic had previously attempted to kidnap or kill them. It seems that this critic is Masih Alinejad.

Masih Alinejad, a human rights activist and journalist critical of the Islamic Republic, wrote on social media platform X that she has learned that the FBI has arrested two people who were planning to assassinate her in the United States.

During their efforts to find and kill the "victim-1", the statement said that Shakeri, Loadholt and Rivera exchanged messages and photos about the progress of their work.

Earlier, the US government confirmed that the Islamic Republic is seeking to kill Donald Trump and a number of his first administration officials, including Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook, and John Bolton, in retaliation for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said, "Few countries in the world pose a more serious threat to US national security than Iran. The Department of Justice has charged an Iranian regime operative with directing a network of criminal accomplices to advance Iran's assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump."