{"id":10543,"date":"2022-08-29T16:54:46","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T13:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/?p=10543"},"modified":"2022-08-30T16:44:22","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T13:44:22","slug":"the-plot-to-assassinate-bolton-may-come-back-to-haunt-tehran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/monitoring-and-translation\/reports\/the-plot-to-assassinate-bolton-may-come-back-to-haunt-tehran\/","title":{"rendered":"The Plot to Assassinate Bolton May Come Back to Haunt Tehran"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A US Justice Department criminal complaint<\/a> and charge sheet unsealed in early August 2022  unveiled an Iranian-backed criminal network that planned to sabotage  US homeland security. The network plotted  to assassinate former US officials in retaliation for a US strike that killed  the Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani  in Iraq in early 2020. The  Quds Force   had been designated as a terrorist group by the United States because of its involvement in  the death of  US personnel<\/a> working in Iraq.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The US Justice Department announced that the FBI was looking for  an Iranian by the name of Shahram Poursafi<\/a>, 45 years of age, of Tehran,  for plotting to assassinate  former US National Security Adviser John Bolton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Bolton played a key role in the US decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, but later resigned from Trump\u2019s administration  to avoid being fired in September 2019. This resignation came long before Soleimani\u2019s killing. But in July 2022, Iran condemned Bolton\u2019s confession<\/a> of attempting to plan coups in other countries. Earlier in 2018,  Bolton warned Iran that the United States \u201cwill come after you\u201d when demanding Tehran\u2019s  change of behavior<\/a> to slow down its nuclear program and terror operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poursafi, who also goes by the name of Mehdi Rezayi,  according to US sources is a member of Iran\u2019s IRGC  under which the Quds Force operates. He was in Iran when the plot to kill  Bolton was unveiled, but allegedly attempted  to pay $300,000<\/a> to individuals in the United States back in November 2021<\/a> to carry out the assassination in Washington DC or in Maryland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One individual Poursafi met online was asked to take pictures of  Bolton<\/a> for a book project, before he would be put into contact  with a second individual who would carry out the assassination. Poursafi is dismissed by the United States as an amateur terrorist<\/a> incapable of even observing the basic principles of a spying operation as he identified  himself to his contacts. Reports indicate that the individual he contacted in the United States was an FBI operative, which enabled the agency to watch the operation unfold over several months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although, Iran dismissed involvement in the assassination plot,  Iranian news websites did confirm that the United States claimed that an assassination plot against Bolton was uncovered involving an Iranian citizen named Mehdi Rezayi<\/a>, but did not offer further details. Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry warned the United States against taking any action against Iranian citizens<\/a> on the pretext of unfounded charges. It also called the allegation  \u201cstory telling\u201d that lacked credible evidence and labeled  Bolton a \u201cbankrupt element,\u201d implying that he was of no significance to Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidence also emerged in August that Iran reportedly offered a bounty of $1 million for the  assassination of former US Secretary of State<\/a> Mike Pompeo.  Pompeo<\/a> was informed by the US Justice Department in August that he was the second target in an Iranian-led transnational murder plot. Previously, the US Government National Counterterrorism Center issued a warning that Iran planned \u201chard revenge\u201d against  former US President Donald Trump, former CENTCOM Commander General Kenneth McKenzie, and former US State Department Iran Envoy Brian Hook.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to  Bolton, the latest one-man led plot carried out in mid-August to kill author Salman Rushdie<\/a> on US soil had a \u201cRevolutionary Guard\u201d component, in reference to the IRGC. The author was stabbed multiple times onstage in a public gathering in upstate New York, and his attacker Hadi Matar<\/a> unrepentantly revealed signs of allegiance to Iran\u2019s religious leaders, having first been brainwashed on a trip to Lebanon in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran\u2019s \u201chardline\u201d newspapers<\/a> publicly praised the plot to kill Rushdie, while Tehran<\/a> blamed the author and his supporters for the stabbing. The author was on an Iranian death list for publishing his book The Satanic Verses<\/em> in  1988, after the then Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa<\/a> calling for his assassination. Current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called the fatwairrevocable in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly,  Bolton criticized the Biden administration<\/a> for staying quiet regarding the plot to assassinate him.  The US Justice Department informed him of the assassination plot long before making it public. Bolton  also happens to think that negotiating with Iran will encourage its terrorist activities<\/a>, and will signal US weakness when more hawkish policies are needed to change Tehran\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Biden\u2019s efforts to revive the Iranian nuclear deal aims to ease tensions with Tehran,  but it offers no guarantees that Iranian belligerency  toward the United States  will subside. More importantly, Iran is increasingly behaving like a hostile state,  aiming to create fear and  to force Washington to revive the nuclear deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consequently, more Republican members of Congress<\/a> are pushing forward measures  to prevent the revival of the nuclear deal  and halt Iran\u2019s  nuclear  program. This approach they think might be sound because they believe  current Iranian hostility  stems from Tehran\u2019s weakness and not strength.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A US Justice Department criminal complaint and charge sheet unsealed in early August 2022  unveiled an Iranian-backed criminal network that planned to sabotage  US homeland security. The network plotted  to assassinate former US officials in retaliation for a US strike that killed  the Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani  in Iraq in early 2020. The  Quds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6926,2709,12],"class_list":["post-10543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports","tag-assassinate-bolton","tag-bolton","tag-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10543"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10551,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10543\/revisions\/10551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}