Pakistani man charged in suspected Iranian plot to assassinate US official
Asif Merchant, with strong Tehran ties, accused of trying to hire two assassins in New York to kill unspecified US official as part of thwarted scheme to avenge Soleimani slaying
A Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate a US official in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Federal officials identified Asif Raza Merchant, 46, as a Pakistani citizen who has said he has a wife and children in Iran. He traveled frequently to Iran, Syria and Iraq, the Justice Department said and allegedly sought to hire a hitman to assassinate a politician or a US government official in the United States.
“For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
Soleimani, who headed the IRGC’s Quds Force, a US-designated terrorist group, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020. Iranian officials have repeatedly vowed to take “revenge” for the killing.
“The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against American citizens,” Garland said.
Court documents do not identify any of the potential targets, but the case was unsealed just weeks after US officials disclosed that a threat on Donald Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before a Pennsylvania rally last month in which Trump was injured by a gunman’s bullet.
That shooting, carried out by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, was unrelated to the Iran threat and the case also has no connection to the Trump assassination attempt.
FBI Director Christopher Wary said the Pakistani national had “close ties to Iran” and that the alleged murder-for-hire plot was “straight out of the Iranian playbook.”
Asif Merchant traveled to New York in April for the purpose of hiring hitmen, even paying a $5,000 advance to two would-be assassins who were actually undercover law enforcement officers.
The instructions prosecutors say he gave to the men he thought he was hiring were for killings to take place in August or September — after he had left the country.
Merchant was arrested on July 12 as he planned to leave the country.
In August 2022, the United States charged a member of the Revolutionary Guards with plotting to assassinate former US National Security Advisor John Bolton.
The Justice Department said Shahram Poursafi, who remains at large, had offered to pay an individual in the United States $300,000 to kill Bolton.
Iran has dismissed the claim that it had plotted to kill Bolton as “fiction.”
Merchant was charged with murder for hire in federal court in New York’s Brooklyn borough. A federal judge ordered him detained on July 17, according to court records.
