The Justice Department on Friday announced federal charges in a thwarted
Iranian plot to kill Donald Trump before the presidential election.

According to court documents, Iranian officials asked Farhad Shakeri, 51, in
September to focus on surveilling and ultimately assassinating Trump. Shakeri
is still at large in Iran, the Justice Department said.

This is a newly disclosed plot and marks yet another alleged attempt on Trump’s
life by the Iranian regime.

Prosecutors allege Shakeri – who participated in recorded conversations with law
enforcement – was originally tasked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to carrying
out other assassinations against US and Israeli citizens inside the US. But IRGC
officials told Shakeri on October 7 to focus only on Trump, court documents say, and
that he had seven days to formulate an assassination plan.

Shakeri, who is an Afghan national residing in Tehran, told investigators that if he was
unable to do come up with a plan in that timeframe, the IRGC would wait until after
the presidential election to move forward as they believed Trump would lose.
......
The US government has repeatedly raised concerns that Iran may try to retaliate for a
2020 US drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a top general in the IRGC, by
trying to kill Trump, who ordered the strike, or his former advisers.