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WASHINGTON − Former President Donald Trump was briefed Tuesday by U.S. intelligence officials about the “real and specific threats” posed by the government of Iran and its alleged efforts to assassinate him, his campaign said.
The U.S. intelligence comes six weeks after the Justice Department charged a Pakistani national with ties to Iran with murder-for-hire as part of an alleged plot to assassinate a U.S. politician or government official, potentially in response to the Trump administration’s 2020 killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, acknowledged the briefing on Tuesday night but declined to address any specifics. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung gave USA TODAY a statement offering few details.
Iranian officials have previously denied any involvement in plots against Trump. Federal officials say they haven’t found information that any foreign government was behind either of the recent alleged assassination plots against Trump, one in Pennsylvania on July 13 and another in Florida Sept. 15.
“President Trump was briefed earlier today by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence regarding real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States,” the Trump campaign statement said.
“Intelligence officials have identified that these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months, and law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure President Trump is protected and the election is free from interference,” the campaign statement said.
Months of US warnings about Iranian plots and election meddling
U.S. intelligence officials have been saying for months that Iran is meddling in the U.S. election to hurt Trump and boost his opponent and Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, because of Trump’s hardline approach to the Islamic Republic.
That effort has included hacking the Trump campaign and attempting to leak the internal information, including lengthy dossiers on potential vice-presidential candidates, to various media outlets, U.S. intelligence officials have said.
Last Wednesday, the FBI and other federal agencies went further, saying Iranian hackers sent people associated with President Joe Biden’s then-campaign for president some unsolicited information stolen from Trump’s campaign. The overture was ignored, the officials said.
That announcement was just the latest in a series of warnings by federal cybersecurity officials about Iran’s efforts to meddle in the upcoming election. They have also said that Russia is also interfering, but in an effort to help Trump and hurt Harris.
An earlier alleged assassination plot
In the alleged assassination plot, a federal criminal complaint unsealed on Aug. 6 alleged that Asif Merchant, 46, arrived in the U.S. around April and contacted a person he believed could help him carry out the scheme.
That person told law enforcement about Merchant’s plans and became a confidential source, the Department of Justice said. Merchant told the source the targets would be people hurting Pakistan and the Muslim world, “not normal people,” according to the complaint.
In a statement released at the time, FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested a link between that alleged plot and the Iranian regime. “This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s complaint allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook,” Wray said.
Federal authorities have said there is no connection between that case and an assassination attempt that injured Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on July 13 – or between it and a second alleged assassination attempt earlier this month.
Ryan Routh has been indicted in that second case and charged with the attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate and other crimes, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Routh, 58, an eccentric drifter, already was facing two gun-related charges after authorities said he pointed a rifle through a fence at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida while the former president and 2024 Republican nominee was playing there.
Iran targeting Trump administration officials for years, US intelligence official
For years, Iran has been targeting Trump administration officials − online and on the ground −as payback for the assassination of Soleimani and its other hardline tactics, authorities have said, including pulling the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
In June 2023, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on members and affiliates of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that it says have engaged in plots to kill former national security adviser John Bolton, other former U.S. government officials and anti-Tehran activists around the world.
The designations by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, did not mention any of the former U.S. officials by name, saying only that those designated “have participated in a series of terrorist plots including assassination plots targeting former United States government officials, dual U.S. and Iranian nationals, and Iranian dissidents.”
But one of those Iranians sanctioned, Revolutionary Guard official Shahram Poursafi, was charged by the Justice Department months earlier with attempting to orchestrate a murder-for-hire plot against Bolton beginning in early November 2021.A former senior U.S. official told USA TODAY at the time that other former Trump-era officials cited by Treasury as being targeted by Iran likely included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Brian Hook, the former U.S. Special Representative for Iran
:Iranian national charged in assassination plot targeting Trump national security adviser John Bolton
The former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the security threats, told USA TODAY in 2023 that he was briefed by federal authorities about ongoing Iranian efforts to target and assassinate those Trump administration leaders because it believed they were responsible for the 2020 U.S. military strike in Baghdad that killed Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force.
Iran will attack ‘at a time and place of their choosing’
In January 2020, as President, Trump said he ordered the military strike on Soleimani because he was plotting “imminent and sinister attacks” on American diplomats and military personnel. Afterward, Iran’s religious leaders publicly vowed to retaliate at a time and place of their choosing.
“The United States remains focused on disrupting plots by the IRGC and its Qods Force, both of which have engaged in numerous attempts and other acts of violence and intimidation against those they deem enemies of the Iranian regime,” said Brian Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in a 2023 statement about the sanctions.
