Feds Uncover Revenge-Fueled Iranian Plot to Assassinate John Bolton

Newly unsealed court documents in D.C. federal court allege that a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps plotted to assassinate former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton in a $300,000 murder-for-hire scheme.

Tehran native Shahram Poursafi, 45, who also went by Mehdi Rezayi, attempted to arrange the murder in late 2021 in retaliation for the Jan. 2020 killing of Qasem Soleimani, an influential Iranian military general, the Department of Justice said in a statement Wednesday.

“While much cannot be said publicly right now, one point is indisputable,” Bolton said in a statement Wednesday after the complaint was unsealed. “Iran’s rulers are liars, terrorists, and enemies of the United States. Their radical, anti-American objectives are unchanged; their commitments are worthless; and their global threat is growing.”

Poursafi attempted to pay people in D.C. or Maryland up to $300,000 to carry out the murder, according to the complaint. He is charged with use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, and with providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot.

The FBI is appealing for help in locating Poursafi, who remains at large abroad.

Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that took out seven people in total, including Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who led Iran-backed militias operating in Iraq. Although he left office months before, Bolton celebrated the deaths in a tweet, congratulating the Trump administration’s effort.

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“Long in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran’s malign Quds Force activities worldwide,” the tweet said. “Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”

According to the complaint, Poursafi’s plan started to take shape more than 18 months later. On Oct. 22, 2021, he asked an individual he’d met online to snap photographs of Bolton, claiming they were for a book he was writing on the former U.N. ambassador and National Security Advisor.

A couple of weeks later, that source introduced Poursafi to an associate, constructing the arrangement with a stipulation that there would need to be video evidence of Bolton’s death to receive full payment. That associate was a confidential FBI informant, the feds say.

Poursafi encouraged the associate to speak in code, passing along phrases about construction work that would translate to details of the plot. In one instance, while speaking about how the murder would be carried out, Poursafi said he had asked the informant to build a structure and that the method of construction was up to the informant, according to details laid out in the Department of Justice’s release.

From October 2021 to late April 2022, Poursafi spoke regularly with the informant, revealing that he reported to a supervisor with a chain of command. He also told the associate that there was an additional $1 million on the table for another “job” which would be easier, should the first be successful, according to the complaint.

The $1 million hit target was undisclosed by the feds but Axios reported that it was Donald Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

But money quickly became a point of contention between the two. Poursafi, frustrated that the murder plot was taking so long to play out and fearing that the execution would be taken away from him by his superiors, sent the informant an image of two plastic bags with stacks of U.S. currency to motivate a rush job.

At one point, on Jan. 3, 2022, Poursafi expressed regret to the unnamed informant that Bolton’s murder could not take place on the anniversary of Soleimani’s death.

Then, on April 28, the informant told Poursafi that he would not work on the second job until he had received some of the funds. Poursafi agreed to pass along a small sum, the complaint says.

Later that day, the FBI set up a cryptocurrency wallet to be passed along to Poursafi, according to the filing, who sent $100 to the account.

“Through the hard work of the FBI’s joint terrorism task forces, we were able to detect this heinous plot and disrupt it,” Larissa L. Knapp, executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, said in a video statement posted online by the Justice Department.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew M. Graves, called the scheme “a brazen plot [to] assassinate a former U.S. official on U.S. soil in retaliation for U.S. actions.”

“Iran and other hostile governments should understand that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will do everything in our power to thwart their violent plots and bring those responsible to justice,” he said.

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