The U.S. Department of Justice filed federal charges against three individuals involved in a thwarted Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump before the 2024 elections, CNN reported.
According to the revealed court documents, in September of last year, officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran (IRGC) tasked Farhad Shakeri, one of the defendants, with monitoring and planning the assassination of the then-Republican presidential candidate in the United States.
Shakeri, who is still a fugitive in Iran, had initially been assigned by the IRGC to carry out a series of assassinations of American and Israeli citizens on U.S. soil.
However, in September, he was instructed to focus exclusively on Trump, with a deadline of seven days to devise an execution plan.
According to authorities, Shakeri stated in his recorded conversations with law enforcement agents that if he did not manage to formulate a plan within that timeframe, the IRGC would choose to wait until after the 2024 presidential elections, hoping that the presidential contender would not be re-elected.
In addition to Shakeri, two other people were arrested in New York.
Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt are facing charges for assisting the Iranian government in surveilling a U.S. citizen.
Both defendants appeared before the court on Thursday and remain detained pending trial.
The U.S. government has repeatedly expressed concerns about the possibility of retaliation from Iran, particularly regarding the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in 2020, a senior commander of the IRGC, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike.
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