WASHINGTON (AP) — An Iranian operative has been charged in a plot to murder former US national security adviser John Bolton in presumed retaliation for a US airstrike that killed the country’s most powerful general, offering $300,000 to “eliminate” the Trump administration official, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
Shahram Poursafi, identified by US officials as a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a US-designated terrorist organization, is currently wanted by the FBI on charges related to the murder-for-hire plot.
Prosecutors say the scheme unfolded more than a year after Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force and an architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East, was killed in a targeted airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport in January 2020. After the strike, Bolton, who by then had left his White House post, tweeted, “Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”
In the fall of 2021, Poursafi, an Iranian citizen who officials say has never visited the United States, offered $300,000 to someone he was corresponding with in the US if the person would hire someone to “eliminate” Bolton, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed Wednesday. Poursafi told the person, who was actually an FBI informant, that he wanted “the guy” to be purged or eliminated.
Poursafi provided the person with Bolton’s office address, including the name and contact information for someone who worked in the office, and took screenshots of surveillance photographs of Bolton’s office, the affidavit says.
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“This was not an idle threat,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a statement released by the department. “And this is not the first time we’ve uncovered brazen acts by Iran to exact revenge against individuals in the US.”
The wanted poster for Shahram Poursaf released by the FBI, August 10, 2022. (FBI via AP)
In his own statement, Bolton thanked the FBI and Justice Department for their work in developing the case and the Secret Service for providing protection.
“While much cannot be said publicly right now, one point is indisputable: Iran’s rulers are liars, terrorists and enemies of the United States,” he said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The unsealing of the complaint comes two days after negotiators seeking to revive the Iran nuclear accord in Vienna closed on a “final text” of an agreement, with parties now consulting in their capitals on whether to agree to it.
Iranian deputy foreign minister Reza Najafi leaves the Palais Coburg where closed-door nuclear talks take place in Vienna, Austria, August 5, 2022.(AP Photo/Florian Schroetter)
The 2015 deal granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for tight curbs on its atomic program. Since the US withdrew from the agreement under President Donald Trump, Iran has sped up its nuclear enrichment program. Bolton has been among the most hawkish critics of the deal and efforts by the Biden administration to rejoin it.
In his statement, he said “Iran’s nuclear weapons and terrorist activities are two sides of the same coin” and asserted that America re-entering the failed 2015 Iran nuclear deal would be an unparalleled self-inflicted wound, to ourselves and our closest Middle East allies.”