Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton was ‘target of Iranian assassination plot’

A member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has been charged over a plot to murder John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, allegedly offering to pay a hitman $300,000 (£245,000).

The US Department of Justice said that Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, had offered to pay individuals in the US hundreds of thousands of dollars to kill Mr Bolton, likely in retaliation for the killing of Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard force, in Jan 2020.

Soleimani, the architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East, was killed in a targeted airstrike at Baghdad International Airport by a US MQ-9 Reaper drone.

After the attack, Mr Bolton, who by then had left his White House post, tweeted: “Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”

He has long-endorsed regime change in Tehran and spoken in support of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a group of dissident exiled Iranians.

“There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs,” Mr Bolton told an MEK gathering in Paris. “And that opposition is centred in this room today.”

According to the criminal complaint, Poursafi asked a US resident, identified only as “Individual A”, to take photographs of Mr Bolton under the guise that the photos were needed for a forthcoming book. The resident then introduced Poursafi to a covert government informant who could take the photographs for a price.

Investigators said the following month Poursafi contacted the informant on an encrypted messaging application and offered the person $250,000 (£204,000) to hire someone to “eliminate” Mr Bolton – an amount that would later be negotiated up to $300,000.

When the informant asked Poursafi to be more specific in his request, he said that he wanted “the guy” purged, and he provided Mr Bolton’s first and last name, according to a sworn statement in support of the complaint.

He later directed the informant to open a cryptocurrency account to facilitate the payment. In subsequent communications, he allegedly told the informant it did not matter how the killing was carried out, but that his “group” would require a video as proof the deed was done.

Iran does not have an extradition treaty with the US, and Poursafi remains at large. The FBI on Wednesday released a most-wanted poster:

In a statement, Mr Bolton, who was also the US ambassador to the United Nations, thanked the FBI and US Department of Justice for their work in unravelling the case.

“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.

Matthew Olsen, the Department of Justice’s top national security official, said it was “not the first time we have uncovered Iranian plots to exact revenge against individuals on US soil and we will work tirelessly to expose and disrupt every one of these efforts”.