A Pakistani man has been convicted of planning to kill Donald Trump and other prominent US politicians two years ago at the behest of Iran.
Asif Merchant was accused of trying to recruit people in the US in a plan targeting Trump and others in retaliation for the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani in 2020, during Trump’s first term as president.
Targets in the 2024 plot, federal prosecutors said, also included the then president Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the UN who ran against Trump that year for the Republican presidential nomination.
Merchant was convicted of “murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries,” directed by the Iranian authorities, the US department of justice said in a statement.
The trial in New York City started last week, days before Trump ordered an assault on Iran, carried out with Israel, that has expanded into the region’s biggest war in years.
Merchant admitted to joining the plot orchestrated by Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) but testified he did so unwillingly in order to protect his family in Tehran.
Merchant said he was never ordered to kill a specific person but that his Iranian handler named three people in the course of conversations in the Iranian capital.
Law enforcement thwarted the plan before any attack occurred. A person Merchant contacted in April 2024 to help with the plot reported his activities and became a confidential informant, the DOJ said. Merchant was arrested and pleaded not guilty that year.
The IRGC has a central role in Iran, with a combination of military and economic power and an intelligence network. Tehran has denied accusations that it targeted Trump or other US officials.
US and Israeli attacks since Saturday have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands, according to Iran’s UN ambassador. Many top Iranian leaders, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been killed.
The US military has said six service members were killed in a strike on a facility in Kuwait, while at least 10 Israeli civilians are reported to have been killed.
