US justice revealed on Wednesday a plot led by a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to assassinate John Bolton, former White House national security adviser.
The US Justice Department said in a statement that Shahram Poursafi, alias Mehdi Rezayi, 45, was charged in his absence with offering to pay people in the United States $300,000 to kill John Bolton.
The plot, apparently aimed at avenging the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in January 2020 in a US strike, was revealed to authorities by the person believed to have killed the former top US official.
The US court’s accusations come as the Iranian regime studies a compromise put forward by the European Union to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, moribund since the US withdrawal in 2018 under the leadership of Donald Trump, then advised by John Bolton.
“This is not the first time we uncovered a plot by Iran”
For months, Tehran has linked any deal to the removal of the Revolutionary Guards, the Islamic Republic’s ideological army, from the US blacklist of terrorist organizations.
“This is not the first time we have uncovered a plot by Iran to seek revenge on American soil and we will work tirelessly to uncover and prevent every such attempt,” said Deputy Security and Justice Minister Matthew Olsen.
John Bolton, national security adviser to Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019, called the 2015 nuclear deal a “big strategic mistake.” He had publicly supported Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from this pact.
Source: BFM TV
