Federal authorities are searching for an Iranian intelligence officer who allegedly has been plotting to assassinate several Trump-era officials in revenge for the assassination of an Iranian military leader by the Trump administration in 2020.
Majid Dastjani Farahani, suspected of working for Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, has been recruiting “individuals for various operations in the United States, to include lethal targeting of current and former United States Government officials as revenge for the killing of IRGC-QF Commander Qasem Soleimani,” the FBI said Friday in a Most Wanted notice.
The FBI has identified at least three Trump-era officials allegedly on the Iranian government’s hit list, including former national security adviser John Bolton, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and former special envoy for Iran Brian Hook, all of whom have since been provided around-the-clock security. “I wish we were in a place that it was not necessary, but that is where we are,” Hook said last week of his police protection.
Iranian officials have said avenging Soleimani’s assassination is one of Iran’s top priorities, with senior members of the nation’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claiming the desire for revenge fueled Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. “The Al-Aqsa Storm [the Oct. 7 invasion] was one of the retaliations of the Axis of Resistance against the Zionists for the martyrdom of Qasem Soleimani,” IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif said in December.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran, through all tools and capacities in order to bring to justice the perpetrators and all those who had a hand in this government-sanctioned act of terror, will not sit until that is done,” Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi said during a September speech at the United Nations in New York. “The blood of the oppressed will not be forgotten.”
The Department of Justice charged an IRGC member in 2022 with plotting to assassinate Bolton, noting the case was “not the first time we have uncovered Iranian plots to exact revenge against individuals on U.S. soil.” In January, the United States and Britain jointly sanctioned 11 Iranians who allegedly tried to assassinate political opponents outside Iran.
