Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with Iran’s parliament members in Tehran, Iran, July 21, 2024. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
US federal law enforcement officials have charged three Iranian intelligence assets with contriving a conspiracy to assassinate critics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as US President-elect Donald Trump, the Department of Justice announced on Friday.
According to the department, Farhad Shakeri, 51; Carlisle Rivera, 49; and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, acted at the direction of and with help from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an internationally designated terrorist organization, to plot to murder a US citizen of Iranian origin in New York. Shakeri, who remains at large and is believed to reside in Iran, was allegedly the principal agent who managed the two other men, both residents of New York City who appeared in court this week.
Their broader purpose, prosecutors said, was to target nationals of the United States and its allies for attacks, including “assaults, kidnapping, and murder, both to repress and silence critical dissidents” and to exact revenge for the 2020 killing of then-IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq. Trump was president of the US at the time of the operation.
The Quds Force is responsible for Iran’s proxies and terrorist operations abroad, and Soleimani was a revered figure among supporters of the Iranian regime.
The Justice Department added in Friday’s statement that Shakeri told law enforcement that he was ordered roughly a month before Tuesday’s US presidential election to develop a plan for murdering Trump, who has vocally criticized Iran’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, harass Israel, and overturn the regional order in the Middle East. It also said that Rivera and Loadholt’s activities in the US included “surveilling two Jewish American citizens living in New York City” and stalking another potential female victim, journalist Masih Alinejad, at her home and other locations. All the targets were to be murdered, jobs for which the agents stood to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to national security of the United States as does Iran,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct of a network of criminal associations 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 [Alinejad] who has been a prominent critic of the regime.”
He added, “We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security.”
All three men are now charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy, and money laundering. Shakeri faces additional charges, including violating sanctions against Iran, providing support to a terrorist organization, and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Powers Act, offenses for which he could serve up to six decades in federal prison. His accomplices, Rivera and Loadholt, were taken into custody earlier this week.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a designated foreign terrorist organization — has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on US soil and that simply won’t be tolerated,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “Thanks to the hard work of the FBI, their deadly schemes were disrupted. We’re committed to using the full resources of the FBI to protect our citizens from Iran or any other adversary who targets Americans.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
