Inside the 2024 Iranian effort to assassinate Trump for the killing of Soleimani

Federal prosecutors have alleged that two Iranian-linked plots to assassinate then-candidate Donald Trump — including one plot directly linked to Iranian intelligence services — were launched in 2024 as Iran sought to meddle in the election to stop Trump’s return to the White House.

The unsuccessful Iranian assassination plots from last year are sure to get renewed attention following Trump's announcement Saturday night that the U.S. military had bombed the main Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Trump said in his White House speech that the goal of Operation Midnight Hammer was "a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror" and said the strikes were "a spectacular military success."

The Iranian attempts on Trump's life last year are detailed in press releases and court filings by the Justice Department and the FBI. Prosecutors have not linked the Iranian efforts to the other assassination efforts against Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally in July and at his Florida golf course in September.

Still, the Iranian murder-for-hire allegations show the multiplicity of threats against Trump’s life during the 2024 presidential campaign and highlight the lengths to which the Iranian government was seemingly willing to go to keep Trump out of the Oval Office for a second term.

The Justice Department has filed charges against Pakistani national Asif Merchant and against Afghan national Farhad Shakeri for their alleged roles in Iranian-backed assassination plots.  The former defendant’s murky plot seemingly targeted Trump while the latter defendant’s more sophisticated plot was definitely aimed at the president.

ODNI: "Notable Attack Planning" from Iran

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has categorized both Iranian-backed assassination plots against Trump last year as examples of “Notable Attack Planning” by the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Iranian government repeatedly sought to meddle in the 2020 election as they attempted to stop Trump’s reelection, and in 2024 they carried out hack-and-leak operations against his campaign and, according to prosecutors, assassination attempts against him personally.

Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the start of Operation Rising Lion, as Israeli jets and drones did significant damage to Iranian nuclear facilities, ballistic missile sites, drone production factories, and military compounds as the Israelis also targeted Iranian military and intelligence officials and nuclear scientists — all with the seeming acquiescence, although not the direct participation, of Trump and the U.S. military.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that within the next two weeks Trump would decide whether the U.S. military will get directly involved in the Israeli efforts to put an end to the Iranian nuclear program. Trump has repeatedly said he believes the Iranian regime is “very close” to obtaining a nuclear weapon.

"We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space," Trump announced on Truth Social on Saturday evening. "A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!"

The ODNI wrote a November 2024 report with a subsection on “Iranian Plots Against Former U.S. Officials” which were being carried out by the Iranians in an effort to avenge the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, who was hit by a U.S. drone strike at the start of January 2020.

General Qassem Soleimani killed

When Trump won in 2016, his first term was marked by a “maximum pressure” campaign against the Iranian regime, with Trump exiting the controversial Iran nuclear deal struck by the Obama administration, increasing sanctions against Iran after they had been lifted by Obama, designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, targeting Iran’s terrorist proxies, killing IRGC leader General Qassem Soleimani, and more.

Soleimani was the head of the IRGC and its specialized Quds Force, and he was a key leader of the Iranian regime's malign foreign influence activities in the region and around the world. The U.S. military took him out through an air strike in early January 2020, and Iran has repeatedly vowed revenge against Trump for the drone strike on Soleimani.

The issue of the Iranian assassination plots came up during a contentious debate over Israel and Iran between Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tucker Carlson on an episode of the commentator’s podcast. Cruz made the case that Iran had tried to kill Trump, and Carlson questioned that in what became a contentious interview.

“If there is evidence that Iran paid hitmen to kill Donald Trump and is currently doing that — what are you even talking about?” Carlson told Cruz. “I’ve never heard that before.”

Cruz followed up with a thread of X where he argued that it is “an objective fact” that the Iranian regime had targeted Trump.

Netanyahu appeared on Fox News last week to emphasize the Iranian regime's animosity toward Trump.

"They [the Iranians] want to kill him [Trump]. He's enemy number one. He's a decisive leader. He never took the path that others took to try to bargain with them in a way that is weak, giving them basically a pathway to enrich uranium, which means a pathway to the bomb, padding it with billions and billions of dollars,” Netanyahu said last weekend. 

"He took up this fake agreement and basically tore it up. He killed Qasem Soleimani. He made it very clear, including now, ‘You cannot have a nuclear weapon, which means you cannot enrich uranium.’ He's been very forceful, so for them, he's enemy number one."

Iran openly threatens revenge by killing Trump

Roughly two years after Soleimani was eliminated by the U.S. military on Trump’s orders, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s official website released a bizarre but threatening animation in January 2022 depicting IRGC forces killing Trump using drones and a robot as the president golfed at his course near Mar-a-Lago.

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the IRGC aerospace chief who was reportedly killed in an Israeli strike earlier this month, told Iranian state television in February 2023 that "God willing, we are looking to kill Trump" to avenge Soleimani, saying that Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former CENTCOM Commander General Frank McKenzie, and the “military commanders who issued the order should be killed.”

Iran International, a Persian-language satellite television outlet based in London which is often critical of the Iranian regime, has also detailed multiple other instances of Iranian officials publicly threatening Trump’s life.

Soleimani's successor, IRGC leader Ismail Qaani, reportedly told the Iranian parliament near the anniversary of his predecessor’s death that “American agents involved in the assassination of martyr Soleimani should learn the secretive life of Salman Rushdie because the Islamic Republic will avenge his unjustly-spilled blood.” 

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the first Supreme Leader of revolutionary Iran and the predecessor to Khameini, had issued an infamous 1988 fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie, a British-American novelist, after he published The Satanic Verses. British-born pop singer Cat Stevens, who adopted the name Yusuf Islam when he converted to Islam, made headlines when he endorsed the religion-based death sentence, The New York Times reported.

Qaani reportedly reiterated his threat when he said that “Trump and others who were with him are all known to us. From Pompeo, who no one humiliated as much as martyr Soleimani, to the U.S. president and all those involved in this crime, [they] are all under the microscope (not only of Muslims but) of all free people of the world.”

Khamenei proclaimed “harsh revenge” against the U.S. and reportedly issued a threatening tweet where he published an image of Trump on a golf course under the shadow of a drone. The Iranian leader later deleted the post.

Then-Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also reportedly claimed around the second anniversary of Soleimani’s death that “if Trump and Pompeo are not tried in a fair court for the criminal act of assassinating General Soleimani, Muslims will take our martyr's revenge.”

Asif Merchant and the ‘murder-for-hire’ plot targeting Trump

Pakistani national Asif Merchant was charged in July 2024 in a “murder-for-hire as part of a scheme to assassinate” Trump. The Justice Department linked the plot to Iran, and the ODNI went even further by linking it to Iranian intelligence.

The September 2024 indictment brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York charged Merchant with murder for hire and for attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries connected to the alleged plot against Trump. Law enforcement agents placed Merchant under arrest before he could leave the country.

Trump’s name did not appear in the criminal court filings against Merchant, but multiple law enforcement officials told multiple news outlets that Trump was a possible target of Merchant’s murder plot.

The ODNI said in its report that “On 6 August, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint against Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran, for attempting to orchestrate a plot to assassinate U.S. politicians and government officials on U.S. soil.”

Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said in August 2024 that “this dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s charges was allegedly orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook.”

“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,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said. 

“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 also said, and added that "we will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security.”

Prosecutors said Merchant allegedly traveled from Pakistan to Istanbul, Turkey, and then to Houston, Texas, to enlist Americans to help him carry out his assassination scheme. Prosecutors said that Merchant was born in the Pakistani city of Karachi and that “in his travel records to enter the United States, Merchant indicated frequent travel to Iran, Syria, and Iraq.”

Merchant was arrested on July 12 when he was ready to board a flight out of the United States and was charged on July 14. The day in between — July 13 — was the day that Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Crooks shot Trump in the ear and shot and killed fire-fighter and Trump rally-goer Corey Comperatore before Crooks was killed by Secret Service snipers.

The FBI special agent who wrote the criminal complaint against Merchant compared his plot against Trump to the charges brought in August 2022 against another IRGC member who had allegedly plotted to assassinate former Trump national security adviser John Bolton “likely in retaliation for the death of Soleimani.”

“Based on my training and experience as well as the facts and circumstances I have learned in the course of this investigation to date, I believe that the tradecraft and operational security measures used by Asif Merchant as described below (e.g., use of coded language, use of multiple cellular telephones, and removal of cellular telephones to attempt to avoid surveillance) are consistent with a person engaged in this type of plotting on behalf of a foreign adversary,” the FBI agent wrote of Merchant’s plot.

Would-be assassin tries to hire undercover agents posing as hitmen

“Since at least April 2024, Merchant orchestrated a plot to assassinate U.S. government officials on U.S. soil. After spending time in Iran, Merchant flew from Pakistan to the U.S. to recruit individuals in the U.S. to carry out his scheme. While in the U.S., Merchant contacted a person he believed could assist him with the criminal scheme,” the DOJ said in its criminal complaint. “That person in fact reported Merchant’s conduct to law enforcement and became a confidential source working with law enforcement (the ‘CS’). Merchant asked the CS to assist him in contracting hitmen. The CS introduced Merchant to two purported hitmen, who were in fact undercover U.S. law enforcement officers (the ‘UCs’). Merchant subsequently paid the UCs $5,000 in cash in New York as an advance payment for the plot to murder U.S. government officials.”

Prosecutors said that Merchant told the CS that he had “traveled to Iran two weeks before traveling to the U.S. in April 2024” and that Merchant “offered multiple times to pay for the CS to travel to Iran.”

The DOJ said Merchant flew from Texas to LaGuardia Airport in New York on June 3.

“The CS picked up Merchant from the airport and drove him to a hotel in Nassau County, New York. While at the hotel, Merchant told the CS that the opportunity he had for the CS was not a one-time opportunity and would be ongoing. Merchant then made a ‘finger gun’ motion with his hand, indicating that the opportunity was related to a killing,” the DOJ said. “Merchant subsequently took the CS’s cellphone and put it in a drawer for security reasons, so they could discuss the plan. Merchant stated that he would give the CS more details about the plan the next day but that he needed the CS to arrange a meeting for Merchant to meet hitmen in New York.”

Merchant then held a June 4 meeting with the CS at a hotel, which was recorded by the FBI.

The CS asked whether Merchant had spoken to the “party” back home with whom Merchant was working. Merchant responded that he had and that the party back home told him to “finalize” the plan and leave the U.S.

Merchant performed “Istikharah from Quran before doing this,” meaning Merchant prayed to God “about whether [he] should do this work or not” and received clarity from God to carry out his mission. Istikharah means "seeking the best course of action," according to About Islam, and "it is used for approaching Allah through Prayer for guidance in a case when one cannot make up his mind."

“While in the hotel room, Merchant took out a napkin and placed objects on the napkin to illustrate a potential assassination plot, including a target (the person to be killed), a crowd, surrounding buildings, and streets,” the DOJ said. “Merchant began planning potential assassination scenarios on the napkin and quizzed the CS on how he would kill the target in the various scenarios. Specifically, Merchant pointed to the target and repeatedly asked the CS to explain how the target would die. Merchant told the CS that there would be ‘security [] all around’ the person.”

Merchant traveled from Boston to New York on June 24 “to make the advance payment to the hitmen for the assassination plot," according to DOJ filings. After undercover agents posing as hitmen arrived, Merchant handed over the $5,000 in cash to them. One of the undercovers told Merchant that “now we’re bonded,” to which Merchant replied, “Yes.” The undercover then stated that “now we know we’re going forward” and “we’re doing this,” to which Merchant responded, “Yes, absolutely.”

After he was arrested, the DOJ successfully sought to keep Merchant detained pending a trial.

Merchant a plea of not guilty in mid-September 2024​​, and is being detained ahead of trial. Jury selection for Merchant’s trial is scheduled for late-January 2026, with the trial beginning soon after.

Merchant's plot raises closer look

More details about the Merchant plot emerged after his arrest, even as Iran denied being behind it. The Iranian-backed plot spurred multiple stories on the increased threat levels against Trump.

According to CNN, a spokesperson for the Iranian regime said in mid-July 2024 that “these accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious. From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice.”

CNN also reported in mid-July 2024 that “U.S. authorities obtained intelligence from a human source in recent weeks on a plot by Iran to try to assassinate Donald Trump, a development that led to the Secret Service increasing security around the former president.”

“Secret Service learned of the increased threat from this threat stream,” an unnamed official told CNN. “NSC directly contacted USSS at a senior level to be absolutely sure they continued to track the latest reporting. USSS shared this information with the detail lead, and the Trump campaign was made aware of an evolving threat. In response to the increased threat, Secret Service surged resources and assets for the protection of former President Trump. All of this was in advance of Saturday.”

Trump said on Truth Social in late July 2024 that “if they do ‘assassinate President Trump,’ which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth — If that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered ‘gutless’ cowards!”

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence Chairman Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) sent an August 2024 letter to Wray saying that “we have serious concerns about the inadequate, and lack of, actions taken by the Biden-Harris administration to impose consequences on the Iranian regime, including efforts to protect our national security and American citizens from foreign threats.”

Just the News reported in August 2024 that the FBI allowed Asif Merchant to enter the U.S. in April 2024 with special permission known as “significant public benefit parole” even though he was flagged on a terrorism watchlist and recently traveled to Iran, according to government documents. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed Merchant, fingerprinted him, and inspected the contents of his electronic devices when he arrived at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, in Houston, but then let him leave with the special parole that expired in mid-May 2024, the memos state.

“Subject was polite and cooperative throughout encounter,” the FBI interview memo reads. “... Subject's notable travel outside of country of citizenship includes a recent trip to Iran.”

Merchant detained briefly, then freed

The immigration records from Merchant's arrival in Houston in mid-April 2024 clearly stated in bright red that he was flagged by the Department of Homeland Security database with the identifier “WATCH LIST” and denoted as a "Lookout Qualified Person of Interest."

Despite direct travel to Iran, a country with known terrorist activity, the memo relayed that Merchant was “released without incident” into the U.S. and was “free to travel to desired destination,” which was listed as a family member's home in Texas. The records show that Merchant was allowed to stay in the country beyond the mid-May 2024 expiration date for his parole. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter to then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas after the revelations were published by Just the News. Grassley himself also revealed new details on Merchant’s plot in early September 2024.

"Bad actors are determined to wreak havoc on our country, and American political leaders across both parties are sitting squarely in the crosshairs,” Grassley said at the time. “In this extraordinarily heightened threat environment, federal agencies ought to be laser focused on building up public trust and reassuring the American people of their efforts to carry out their protective missions."

Grassley released an FBI proffer document containing statements from Merchant which were potentially made in exchange for some sort of leniency from federal prosecutors. 

The FBI proffer document recounted Merchant’s description of an alleged meeting he had at a safe house in Iran with his handler — Mehrdad Yousef.

Merchant said Yousef told him the target could be Trump but then, after a pause, said it could also be President Joe Biden or former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. "Merchant reiterated that he did not know who the target was, but he interpreted Yousef's pause to mean that Trump could be a target,” the FBI document said. “Merchant understood that the killing was related to Iran's retaliation for the death of Qassam Soleimani." 

Merchant and Yousef also allegedly discussed the pros and cons of indoor versus outdoor attempts to assassinate a U.S. politician.

Yousef “had drawn a diagram on a whiteboard to demonstrate to Merchant how an assassination could be conducted” and “drew a rectangle representing an area where a crowd would gather,” according to the document, which said that “at the top of the rectangle was a small box representing a podium whether the target could be located.”

According to the FBI document, Merchant said that an indoor assassination attempt could be made with a pistol and a “far” or “outdoor” shot would be taken with a long-range rifle, with the document stating that “Merchant believed that both the near and far options would not be successful due to security, but assessed that there was a 50% chance either tactic would succeed.”

The would-be assassin also said he watched an online Trump rally to come up with an “assessment of how the killing could be conducted” against Trump. Merchant wrote that he believed there were 20 cameras, 30 guards, a motorcade of 20 vehicles, and four or five scanners to walk through.

Merchant also said he thought the IRGC would pay $1 million to everyone who participated in the assassination effort, but that he believed he would only receive $50,000 for his role.

The FBI under Wray released a statement at the time arguing that Grassley’s disclosure was “irresponsible and undermines the FBI's ability to conduct thorough investigations and enforcement actions that keep Americans safe” and that it “also puts lives at risk, especially when you are dealing with an adversary like Iran.”

"Senator Grassley’s disclosure of the unclassified document is in keeping with Congress’s independent constitutional authority to conduct oversight, a fact which DOJ has directly acknowledged to Senator Grassley’s staff,” Grassley’s office said in its own statement. 

“Failure to acknowledge that same reality in comments to the press is disappointing and misleading. Senator Grassley welcomes agency engagement on this issue and awaits a legitimate explanation from DOJ and FBI as to how the document’s publication impedes their investigation, which DOJ itself highly publicized over a month ago in a 15-page indictment and corresponding press release."

Farhad Shakeri and another ‘murder-for-hire’ plot  against Trump

In the fallout of Merchant's arrest, another Iranian-backed assassination attempt was revealed. The DOJ announced a few days after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris that Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national and alleged IRGC asset residing in Tehran, had been charged in a murder-for-hire plot against Trump.

Shakeri was charged in the Southern District of New York with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, money laundering conspiracy, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the Government of Iran.

The Justice Department stated that “Shakeri is an IRGC asset residing in Tehran, Iran.”

The ODNI does not name Shakeri but clearly references him by listing his criminal endeavors as an example of “Notable Attack Plotting” by the IRGC, with ODNI saying that in November 2024 “a U.S. indictment reveals that the IRGC plans to use a criminal network to conduct murder-for-hire operations against an Iranian-American dissident, Jewish citizens, and then–Presidential candidate Donald Trump.”

Shakeri, Carlisle Rivera of Brooklyn, and Jonathon Loadholt of Staten Island were also charged in early November 2024 “in connection with their alleged involvement in a plot to murder a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin in New York.” The target was easily identifiable as Iranian-American activist and journalist Masih Alinejad.

Shakeri also told the FBI that he had been instructed by Iran to plot a mass shooting targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka. He also said he had been tasked with surveilling two Jewish Americans in New York.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran. The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” Garland said when the Shakeri charges were made public. “We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security.”

Wray said in a press release that “the charges announced today expose Iran's continued brazen attempts to target U.S. citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran” and that the IRGC “has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil and that simply won’t be tolerated.”

Then-U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York said in the same press release that “actors directed by the Government of Iran continue to target our citizens, including President-elect Trump, on U.S. soil and abroad” and that “this has to stop.”

Shakeri’s IRGC-linked criminal network

The DOJ said that “Shakeri has used a network of criminal associates he met in prison in the United States to supply the IRGC with operatives to conduct surveillance and assassinations of IRGC targets” and that “Shakeri has informed law enforcement that he was tasked on Oct. 7, 2024” — the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks — “with providing a plan to kill” Trump.

“According to Shakeri, in approximately mid-to-late September 2024, IRGC Official-1 asked Shakeri to put aside his other efforts on behalf of the IRGC and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump (‘Victim-4’ herein),” the DOJ complaint against the IRGC operative stated. “Shakeri indicated to IRGC Official-1 that this would cost a ‘huge’ amount of money. In response, IRGC Official-1 said that ‘we have already spent a lot of money .. . [s]o the money's not an issue,’ which ShakeriI understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4's assassination.”

The DOJ complaint continued that “according to Shakeri, during his meeting with IRGC Official-1 on or about October 7, 2024, IRGC Official-1 directed Shakeri to provide a plan within seven days to kill Victim-4. If Shakeri was unable to put forth a plan within that timeframe, IRGC Official-1 continued, the IRGC would pause its plan to kill Victim-4 until after the U.S. Presidential elections, because IRGC Official-1 assessed that Victim-4 would lose the election and, afterward, it would be easier to assassinate Victim-4.”

The criminal complaint specifies that "Victim-4" was then-candidate Donald Trump.

Court filings showed that, on at least five occasions between late September and early November 2024, Shakeri participated in "voluntary telephonic interviews with FBI agents" in exchange for a sentence reduction for another individual imprisoned in the U.S.

Shakeri had immigrated to the U.S. as a child, the DOJ said, and he was deported in 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction. Court filings related to Shakeri’s imprisonment in the U.S. decades ago are available online, showing he was previously held in Otisville, New York.

Alleged co-conspirators Rivera and Loadholt both pleaded not guilty in December. A status conference for Rivera and Loadholt is scheduled for next week. Shakeri remains at large and is believed to be in Iran. 

Then-House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, R-Tenn., said in early November that “the fact that the IRGC sponsored a plot to kill a former and now incoming president demonstrates Tehran’s dedication to undermining our democratic process and disrupting any effort to deter its malign influence on the world stage.” 

Ryan Routh's Iranian motivation

Ryan Routh, who was charged with attempting to assassinate Trump last September, does not appear to have been directed to do so by the Iranian regime, but his own words show that his murder attempt was at least partly driven by his opposition to Trump’s hardline stance toward Iran.

Secret Service agents had reportedly spotted Routh with a rifle at Trump’s Florida golf course in what authorities said was an apparent assassination attempt on the former and future president. Routh has entered a "not guilty" plea, according to NPR.

A court filing by the DOJ in September stated that Routh had written a letter addressed to “The World” which stated, “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.” The handwritten letter also argued that Trump “ended relations with Iran like a child and now the Middle East has unraveled.”

Routh also wrote an apparently self-published book in February 2023 titled Ukraine’s Unwinnable War. In it, Routh took “part of the blame” for electing Trump and said: “Iran, I apologize.” He directed a message to Iran: “You’re free to assassinate Trump… No one here in the U.S. seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection.”

The attempted Trump assassin repeatedly wrote about his love of Iran and claimed he had tried to apply for a visa from Iran so he could travel there.

“I hope as time passes I will be afforded that opportunity to get to know all of Iran,” Routh wrote. “I applied for a visa to join my Iranian friends in Iran to encourage the end of sanctions and to hopefully build a friendship with the wonderful people at the embassy and the Iranian leadership and had sent numerous letters and documents inviting them for talks, meeting and travel to the U.S. to end the silliness of the historic misunderstand that we are all humans.”

Routh made it clear in his book that he opposed U.S. sanctions against the Iranian regime, he praised Obama-era Secretary of State John Kerry for his role in putting together the controversial Iran nuclear deal, and he attacked Trump.

“I want to be there in the streets with the Iranians with banners and posters and screaming for justice. I would also like to be protesting in those streets against U.S. sanctions. I would like to celebrate the amazing work of John Kerry that [sic] very humbly and humanly handled the Iran deal which elated me and the whole of the world. I must take part of the blame for the retarded child that we elected for our next president [Trump] that ended up being brainless, but I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and Iran, I apologize.”

Routh also wrote that “we made a tremendous blunder with Iran that Trump started and Biden has foolishly not fixed.”

After Trump’s victory, Iran's litany of denials

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Iran has repeatedly denied being behind the plots by Merchant and Shakeri. Their denials took on greater importance after Trump’s win in November.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said in early November 2024 that Iranian involvement was “completely baseless” and claimed that “repeating such claims at this juncture is a malicious conspiracy orchestrated by Zionist and anti-Iranian circles, aimed at further complicating the issues between the U.S. and Iran.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi claimed at the time that “as a killer does not exist in reality, scriptwriters are brought in to manufacture a third-rate comedy.”

“This is another one of those schemes that Israel and other countries are designing to promote Iranophobia. ... Iran has never attempted to nor does it plan to assassinate anyone. At least as far as I know. … We have never attempted this to begin with, and we never will,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told NBC News in mid-January just days before Trump took office again.

Trump: Assassination would trigger "obliteration" of Iran

In the latter months of the 2024 race, it became clear that the Trump campaign was taking the Iranian threat seriously. Trump has repeatedly said that a successful assassination effort against him by the Iranian regime would be devastating for Iran.

"President Trump was briefed earlier today by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence regarding real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States," the Trump campaign said in a late September 2024 statement to the media.

“Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire U.S. Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again. Not a good situation for anyone,” Trump said on Truth Social in late September. “I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before. Thank you to Congress for unanimously approving far more money to Secret Service — Zero ‘NO’ Votes, strictly bipartisan. Nice to see Republicans and Democrats get together on something. An attack on a former President is a Death Wish for the attacker!”

During a rally in North Carolina late that month, Trump told the crowd that “if I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens. We’re going to blow it to smithereens. You can’t do that. And there would be no more threats.”

It was reported by Politico in early October 2024 that “U.S. officials are coming to a troubling realization about Iran’s repeated threats to kill Donald Trump and some of his former top generals and national security strategists: Tehran isn’t bluffing — and it isn’t giving up anytime soon.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2024 that “Iran offered written assurances to the Biden Admin last month that it wouldn’t seek to kill Donald Trump, U.S. officials said, a secret exchange meant to cool tensions between Tehran and Washington — as the Republican prepares for his White House return.”

It was also reported by Axios earlier this year that “law enforcement officials warned Trump last year that Tehran had placed operatives in the U.S. with access to surface-to-air missiles.”

After he won reelection last year, Trump said in February that Iran would be “obliterated” if it assassinated him while in office.

“If they did that they would be obliterated,” Trump told reporters. “I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.”

The return of "Maximum Pressure"

Trump signed an executive order in early February titled “Imposing Maximum Pressure on the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Denying Iran All Paths to a Nuclear Weapon, and Countering Iran’s Malign Influence.”

“Since its inception in 1979 as a revolutionary theocracy, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has declared its hostility to the United States and its allies and partners. Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terror and has aided Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist networks,” Trump’s directive said.

Trump declared that “Iran’s nuclear program, including its enrichment- and reprocessing-related capabilities and nuclear-capable missiles, poses an existential danger to the United States and the entire civilized world” and that “a radical regime like this can never be allowed to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, or to extort the United States or its allies through the threat of nuclear weapons acquisition, development, or use.”

The Trump White House’s “fact sheet” said that “Iran should be denied a nuclear weapon and intercontinental ballistic missiles; Iran’s terrorist network should be neutralized; and Iran’s aggressive development of missiles, as well as other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities, should be countered.”

Trump said that “I’m torn about” the executive order and that “it’s very tough on Iran… I’m going to sign it, but hopefully I’m not going to use it very much… I don’t have much choice… Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Sunday morning that the U.S. strikes against the Iranian nuclear sites by B-2 stealth bombers were an “incredible and overwhelming success” and that “Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.”

President Trump survived Iran’s assassination attempts last year and, as U.S. bunker-buster bombs have now dropped on Iranian nuclear sites, it remains to be seen whether the Iranian nuclear weapons program will be able to survive his second term.