Pakistani man says Iran forced him into plot to kill Trump, media say

A Pakistani man accused of planning to kill President Donald Trump told jurors on March 4 that he did not willingly work with Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to devise the plot, the media said.

The Justice Department accused Asif Merchant of trying to recruit people in the US in the plan targeting Mr Trump and other US politicians, in retaliation for Washington’s killing of the Corps’ top commander, Qassem Soleimani.

The Corps has a central role in Iran, with its combination of military and economic power and an intelligence network.

“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” the New York Times quoted Merchant as telling a court during his trial for terrorism and murder-for-hire charges, adding that he participated to protect his family in Tehran.

Prosecutors rejected Merchant’s claim, citing a “lack of evidentiary support for a true duress or coercion”, according to a letter sent on March 3 to the judge in the case dating from 2024.

According to the newspaper, Merchant said he had never been ordered to kill a specific person but that his Iranian handler named three people in the course of conversations in the Iranian capital.

In addition to Mr Trump, these were Mr Joe Biden, the president at the time; Ms Nikki Haley, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

Lawyers for Merchant did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately comment.

The trial started last week, days before Mr Trump ordered

strikes on Iran carried out with Israel

that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top officials in the Middle Eastern nation.

Mr Trump cited an alleged Iranian plot when he spoke to ABC News on March 1 about a joint US-Israeli operation that killed Ayatollah Khamenei, saying, “I got him before he got me.”

Tehran has denied accusations that it targeted Mr Trump and other US officials. REUTERS