A man is on the run after an Iranian plot to assassinate president-elect Donald Trump was thwarted by the FBI, the US government said.
Two men, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, have been arrested in New York, while a third suspect, Farhad Shakeri, is believed to be hiding in the Iranian capital of Tehran.
All three been charged with being hired to execute the Republican ahead of the presidential elections in which he faced vice president Kamala Harris.
The Justice Department unsealed the criminal charges against the three, revealing that Shakeri was an asset of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the US.
In a statement, the department said that Shakeri had informed law enforcement ‘that he was tasked on October 7, 2024, with providing a plan to kill’ Trump.
He is alleged to have told officers he had no plans to formulate an assassination plot within the IRGC’s timeline.
The department said the 51-year-old immigrated to the US as a child and was deported in or about 2008 following a robbery conviction.
While in prison, he met Rivera and Loadholt and hired them to target an Iranian American activist living in Brooklyn, according to officials.
The IRGC also tasked Shakeri with carrying out other assassinations against US and Israeli citizens located on US soil, including Trump.
Prosecutors did not identify the target, but it matched the description of Masih Alinejad, a journalist and activist who has criticized Iran’s head-covering laws for women.
Four Iranians were charged in 2021 in connection with a plot to kidnap her, and in 2022 a man was arrested with a rifle outside her home.
With the charges unsealed days after the presidential elections, the plot reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by by Iran to target US government officials, including Trump, on US soil.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said: ‘There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran.
‘The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including president-elect Donald Trump.
‘We have also charged and arrested two individuals who we allege were recruited as part of that network to silence and kill, on US soil, an American journalist who has been a prominent critic of the regime.
‘We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security.’
Rivera and Loadholt have both been detained pending trial.
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