The US charged Farhad Shakeri, a national of Iran, in connection with an alleged plot orchestrated by Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, according to the Department of Justice.
The court documents say Iranian officials requested Shakeri initially tasked with carrying out assassinations of American and Israeli citizens on US soil, but in September instructed him to focus on surveillance and ultimately the assassination of Trump. Shakeri told law enforcement that he was tasked with developing a plan to assassinate Trump on 7 October 2024, the agency said in a statement.
The Justice Department described Shakeri, 51, as a Revolutionary Guard activist living in Tehran. It said he immigrated to the US as a child and was deported around 2008 after a robbery conviction. Prosecutors stated that Shakeri is at large and is believed to be in Iran.
Iran, for its part, has categorically denied the Justice Department’s allegations. The Foreign Ministry, in a post on social media platform X on Saturday, described the accusations as “completely baseless and rejected,” adding that “similar accusations have been made in the past,” which Iran has “firmly denied and proven false.”
In addition, two other defendants on Friday, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, both US citizens, were arrested in New York and are accused of helping the Iranian government spy on an individual US citizen of Iranian descent. They made their first court appearance Thursday, the Justice Department said, and are in custody awaiting trial.
