How Iran Allegedly Tried To Kill Donald Trump, The 7-Day Deadline And How Two Assassination Plots Collapsed During 2024 Campaign

Just over a week after the US and Israel declared war on Iran and killed its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, new reports have started connecting Tehran to alleged assassination plots against former President Donald Trump.

Did Iran try to assassinate Trump? 

Apparently, there were two failed attempts in 2024. Both involved Iran trying to put together “kill teams” aimed at Trump, according to The New York Post.

In one case, Iran supposedly sent a spy to recruit hitmen to target Trump while he was campaigning for the 2024 election. That spy found two men in the US for the job, but both got caught.

One of them, Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani man accused of having ties to Iran, was found guilty last week. Prosecutors said he planned to kill Trump or other US officials to get back at the US for killing Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani in a 2020 drone strike.

Here’s what went down inside the plots

In 2024, the US Justice Department charged Farhad Shakeri, 51, in connection with a plot the Revolutionary Guards allegedly ordered. Shakeri, who lives in Tehran, recruited two New Yorkers—Carlisle Rivera (who goes by Pop) and Jonathon Loadholt.

Court documents show Shakeri told an IRGC official that killing Trump would be expensive. The official wasn’t fazed. “We’ve already spent a lot of money,” he said, “so the money’s not an issue.”

Shakeri took that as a sign Iran had already poured resources into trying to assassinate Trump—and would keep going.

Shakeri was told to come up with a plan to kill Trump during the 2024 campaign, and he had just seven days to deliver. If he couldn’t pull it off, the official said the Guards would hit pause on the plan until after the election, figuring Trump would lose and be an easier target then.

The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was a Pakistani man who was convicted on Friday in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, of plotting to assassinate US politicians, including United States President Donald Trump, after travelling to the United States in 2024 to recruit assassins to carry out the assassinations.

According to a press release by the US Department of Justice, prosecutors claimed the accused, Asif Merchant, 47, was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran.

In July, the same year he was arrested in Texas.

Who did the assassination attempt against Trump?

Merchant confessed at trial that the IRGC had sent him to the United States to plan political assassinations and document theft, and that the scheme to do so was thwarted by law enforcement prior to the attack being executed.

In April of 2024, Merchant entered the United States, and was met at the border by alleged hitmen, actually undercover US law enforcement agents in New York, and was arrested prior to departing the country in July of 2024.

The press release by the US Department of Justice claims; Merchant sentenced to life imprisonment.

Merchant admitted to the jurors during the trial that his Iranian facilitator had provided him with three possible targets, followed by US president Joe Biden, president Donald Trump and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, in a report by Bloomberg.

He had been found guilty of an attempted terrorism charge and a murder-for-hire.

Prosecutors claim that after coming to the country, Merchant attempted to hire hitmen to kill a US politician at a political rally. Testimonies of an FBI informant who had covertly recorded meetings with Merchant were also raised by the prosecution.

Merchant took the stand in his defence and testified that he had conspired with the scheme to save his family back in Iran and that he would later provide information of the scheme to the US authorities. His attorney contended that he had no intentions of executing the murder and was acting as if he was a part of the assassination plot so that his family could be spared.

Merchant gave evidence that he was aware of the IRGC as a designated terrorist organisation and indicated that he travelled back to Iran on numerous occasions to meet with his handler in this time.

In 2024, Merchant was returned to the United States with another mission to recruit members of the so-called Mafia to steal documents, hold a protest and organize the assassination of one of three targeted US politicians or government officials.

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