The murder-for-hire charge announced this week against a Pakistani national linked in court documents to Iran marks the fourth alleged Iranian assassination plot in the United States in the past three years that the FBI has foiled, in what the attorney general called Iran’s “persistent” and “brazen” campaign to punish its enemies on American soil.
Among the questions raised by this remarkable and surprisingly unsuccessful campaign are: Why do the Iranians continue to send amateurs who seem to be caught so easily? And what is the United States doing to deter Iran from behaving so treacherously?
Law enforcement officials and experts who study the Iranian regime say it is harder than most people think for Iran to conduct a covert operation inside the United States. Iran does not have an embassy here to host intelligence agents, and U.S. intelligence and border protection agencies have been fairly successful in preventing the entry of Iranians with ties to that country’s military and spy services.
“They can’t get in here,” said Kenneth Katzman, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center who has spent decades tracking Iran for the Congressional Research Service. “They’re working with people who can get in here, which means they have to work with people who aren’t wanted. Iranian agents can’t get in here as easily.”
As for recruiting agents in the United States, “not many people here support this regime,” Katzman said. “There are not many takers for what Iran is offering. So they have to work with what they can recruit.”
But Norm Roule, who studied Iran for decades as a CIA analyst, says that misses the point: Even when plots fail, Iran benefits.
“Any assessment that Iran is outsourcing lethal operations to a ‘B team’ ignores the utility of unofficial actors,” said Roule, currently affiliated with United Against Nuclear Iran. “Unofficial agents who have no history of engagement with Iran are harder to identify.”
And even the operations that fail have value, Roule said. The failed operations that go unpunished, he said, prove to the world that Iran’s security services “can carry out deadly operations around the world against officials, dissidents or journalists without paying a price.”
In this context, Roule said, “recourse to unofficial actors is more judicious than to an official actor, since the compromise of the latter could lead to military action.”
Asif Merchant, a Pakistani man charged this week in an assassination plot that authorities say may have targeted former President Donald Trump, discussed the operation upon his arrival in Texas with a person who quickly reported him to police, according to court documents. The FBI launched a sting operation, dangling hitmen who were actually undercover agents. He was arrested in July as he tried to leave the country. Authorities say there is no connection between the plot and the assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania by a local who had investigated mass shootings and political assassinations.
Two years ago, a similar scenario played out when a man suspected of ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard tried to hire people to kill John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser. Unbeknownst to the serial killer, he was dealing with an FBI informant who was reporting on the plot as it unfolded, according to court documents.
U.S. officials say the plots were aimed at revenge for the 2020 targeted assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, which was believed to have killed scores of Americans.
In 2011, a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington was foiled by a confidential DEA (Department of Economic Affairs) informant. The Iranian-born American citizen recruited to carry out the plot, which involved bombing a popular Washington restaurant, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2013 to 25 years in federal prison.
Two other alleged plots – both targeting an Iranian dissident in New York – appear to be close to fruition.
In 2021, the Justice Department charged four alleged Iranian intelligence agents with trying to kidnap Masih Alinejad. And last year, federal prosecutors charged three members of an Eastern European crime syndicate with trying to kill her. Alinejad survived because she didn’t answer her door in Brooklyn, New York, when a man with an assault rifle rang the doorbell, court documents show. He drove away, ran a stop sign, and was arrested, helping to foil the plot.
Iran denies planning assassinations in US
In an exclusive interview with NBC News last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Iranians “are brazen about this and they persist in doing so. … I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Iranian plots.”
In announcing each of these cases, Justice Department and FBI officials pointed the finger at Iran, castigated its behavior and vowed to hold the conspirators accountable.
“An attempted assassination of a former U.S. government official on American soil is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” said Steven M. D’Antuono, then assistant director of the FBI’s Washington field office, when Bolton’s plot was revealed.
But the FBI doesn’t make foreign policy, and the Biden administration has been less forthright. Critics, including Roule and Bolton, say the administration has failed to make Iran think twice before attempting to assassinate former U.S. officials and dissidents on American soil.
Bolton, the target of the 2021 plot, praised the FBI for doing a great job thwarting the Iranians’ plans but criticized the Biden administration for failing to make clear in its public statements that Iran would face a cost for its behavior.
“They keep saying this is a law enforcement issue. This is not a law enforcement issue,” he said. “They are committing acts of war against the United States. This is not criminal activity, this is regime-directed activity — it’s a foreign government.”
The lack of a U.S. military threat, Roule said, “and the treatment of Iranian operations as a legal matter likely encouraged Tehran to authorize lethal operations against (the United States). Similar operations are taking place in Europe and elsewhere because of the lack of a collective response against Iran. We should expect such operations to continue.”
A National Security Council spokesperson noted that after the Bolton plot was revealed, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement: “If Iran attacks any of our citizens, including those who continue to serve the United States or have served in the past, Iran will face severe consequences. We will continue to use the full resources of the U.S. government to protect Americans.”
NSC spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement: “As we have said repeatedly, we take these threats very seriously and strongly condemn any actions by Iran and any other country that threaten American citizens. … The Biden-Harris administration has imposed more than 700 sanctions on Iran, and as long as they continue to threaten Americans, our allies, and our partners, we will not hesitate to take further action to hold them accountable.”
But a review of the records shows that the administration has not consistently condemned what it considers Iranian assassination plots or publicly warned Iran to stop them.
Asked whether she condemned the latest plot, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to do so.
“We have said repeatedly that we are monitoring Iranian threats against former political officials,” she said this week. “We have been very clear that these threats stem from Iran’s desire to seek revenge for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani. … We consider this to be a national and internal security issue of the highest priority, the highest priority, (and) we have met repeatedly at the highest levels of our government to develop and implement a comprehensive response to these threats.”
A few weeks ago, when NBC News and other media outlets reported that the United States had received intelligence about an Iranian threat against Trump’s life, the White House issued a written statement that stopped short of condemning the plot.
“We have repeatedly briefed the public and Congress on these threats. We have met repeatedly at the highest levels of our government to develop and implement a comprehensive response to these threats. As part of this comprehensive response, we have invested extraordinary resources to develop additional information on these threats, disrupt individuals involved in these threats, strengthen safeguards for potential targets of these threats, collaborate with foreign partners, and directly warn Iran. We are also in constant contact with the agencies overseeing the security details of these former officials to share timely information on evolving threats and to reinforce President Biden’s directive that they be provided with all the resources, capabilities, and safeguards necessary to address these evolving threats.”
In contrast, when U.S. officials concluded that the Indian government was behind the killing of a Sikh activist last year in Canada, White House spokesman John Kirby said the administration was “deeply concerned” about the case.
And when the United States concluded that an Indian government official was behind a plot to commit a similar murder in the United States, the White House engaged in “direct conversations with the Indian government at the highest levels to express our concern,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
Republicans are complaining about the inexplicable weakness of the Biden administration’s response to Iran’s alleged plots. Neither President Joe Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris have commented on the alleged Iranian assassination plots.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris must make clear that any attempt by Iran to assassinate former President Trump or members of his administration is an act of war,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner said in a statement.
