Iranian charged over plot to kill ex-Trump adviser

WASHINGTON • The US Justice Department has announced charges against a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for allegedly plotting to kill former White House national security adviser John Bolton - an accusation Teheran dismissed as "fiction" yesterday.

The Justice Department said on Wednesday that Shahram Poursafi, 45, had offered to pay an individual US$300,000 (S$410,800) to kill Mr Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations.

The plan was likely in retaliation for the US killing of top Guards commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq in January 2020, the department said. According to the charges, Poursafi is a member of the Guards' elite Quds Force.

The Justice Department said he is at large, presumably in Iran.

But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani accused the department of making "allegations without providing valid evidence, creating a new work of fiction". He added: "The Islamic Republic warns against any action that targets Iranian citizens by resorting to ridiculous accusations."

The allegation comes as Iran weighs a proposed deal to revive the 2015 agreement that aims to prevent Teheran from developing nuclear weapons. The US withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

Talks in Vienna to rekindle it have been held up as the US and Iran argue over Washington's designation of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group.

US court filings say that in October last year, Poursafi, working from inside Iran, contacted an unidentified person in the US saying he wanted to commission photographs of Mr Bolton. That person passed the Iranian on to another contact, whom Poursafi then asked to kill Mr Bolton for US$300,000.

He also dangled the possibility of a second target which would earn the ostensible assassin US$1 million. The court papers did not identify that target but, according to US media outlet Axios, it was former secretary of state and CIA director Mike Pompeo.

However, the person Poursafi was dealing with was an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the court filings.

Poursafi was charged with the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, which brings up to 10 years in prison; and with providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot, which carries a 15-year sentence.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE