Iranian citizen tapped to create plan to assassinate former president, DOJ alleges, although he never followed through.

The United States Department of Justice has unsealed criminal charges against a man allegedly tasked by Iran with “surveilling and plotting to assassinate” Donald Trump before the presidential election.

The criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan on Friday said an agent with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had instructed an Afghan citizen, Farhad Shakeri, to come up with the plan in October.

However, Shakeri told investigators he did not intend to provide a plan in the timeline requested: Before the election on November 5.

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department “has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump”.

He added, “There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran.”

On Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the US accusations as “totally unfounded”.

The ministry “rejects allegations that Iran is implicated in an assassination attempt targeting former or current American officials”, spokesman Esmail Baghaei said in a statement.

He called it a “repulsive” plot by Israel and Iranian opposition outside the country “aimed at making US-Iran problems more complicated”, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Similar accusations in the past were rejected by Iran as their “erroneousness” was proved, he said.

Former immigrant deported

The alleged assassination effort was revealed as part of a wider complaint that alleged Shakeri, together with New York City residents Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Lodholt, had taken part in a separate plot to kill a US journalist who has been a vocal critic of Iran.

The complaint said Rivera and Lodholt had spent months surveilling the journalist, who was not identified, and shared regular updates with Shakeri, who remains at large and is believed to reside in Iran.

According to the Justice Department, Shakeri immigrated to the US as a child and was deported in or about 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction.

“In recent months, Shakeri has used a network of criminal associates he met in prison in the United States to supply the IRGC with operatives to conduct surveillance and assassinations of IRGC targets,” the Justice Department said in a news release.

Shakeri also told investigators he had been offered $500,000 to surveil and eventually kill two “Jewish American citizens residing in New York”.

The three men were charged with murder-for-hire and money laundering. Shakeri has also been charged with providing and conspiring to provide “material support to a foreign terrorist organisation”.

US says Iran motivated by revenge

The FBI has said threats against Trump surged following the July 13 assassination attempt against the former president in Butler, Pennsylvania, although that attack was not believed to have been connected to any foreign actors.

A second assassination attempt against Trump in September was also not believed to have been connected to any foreign governments.

Still, in August, the Justice Department said a Pakistani man was charged in an alleged plot to carry out political assassinations in the US.

The arrested man, Asif Merchant, allegedly had ties with Iran, although court documents did not specify who he was targeting.

In September, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he had been briefed by US intelligence on “big threats” to his life by Iranian agents.

His campaign manager said at the time that the intelligence community had warned Trump “regarding real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States”.

In its statement on Friday, the Justice Department repeated allegations that Iran is “actively targeting nationals of the United States and its allies living in countries around the world for attacks, including assault, kidnapping, and murder”.

It claimed that Iran was doing so both to silence dissent and to enact vengeance for the US drone killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in January 2020.

Trump was president when that strike was ordered.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies