Iran plotted to kill Trump before Khamenei was a US target: Pakistani convicted of recruiting hitmen
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The conviction of a Pakistani national in a Federal Court in the United States has revealed an alleged plot to assassinate US President Donald Trump in 2024 at the behest of Iran, for whom the convicted man is said to have worked by recruiting hit men, stealing sensitive documents and planning the assassination of high-ranking American officials.
A jury in a Federal District Court in Brooklyn found Asif Merchant, a 47-year-old Pakistani national, guilty of attempted terrorism transcending national boundaries and murder for hire, thereby concluding a week-long trial that prosecutors said exposed a clandestine effort orchestrated with the backing of Iran’s powerful security apparatus.
The verdict was delivered after the jury deliberated for less than two hours, and Merchant now faces the prospect of life imprisonment.
According to prosecutors, the alleged conspiracy had been conceived at the direction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military and intelligence institution of Iran, which they said had tasked Merchant with fomenting disorder in the United States through targeted assassinations and covert subversion.
Federal prosecutors described the accused as an intermediary who attempted to recruit criminal operatives capable of carrying out assassinations, staging disruptive protests at political gatherings and stealing sensitive documents linked to prominent political figures.
The investigation revealed that the plot was motivated in part by anger over the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a US drone strike in Iraq on January 3, 2020, an operation ordered during the presidency of Trump.
Prosecutors stated that Merchant had expressed admiration for Soleimani and had posted inflammatory images on social media depicting Trump in violent and degrading imagery, while also pledging revenge following the Iranian general’s death.
Merchant, who was raised in Karachi and travelled frequently to Iran, admitted during testimony that he had been recruited by a member of the Revolutionary Guard Corps through a contact named Mehrdad Yousef, whom he described as an official linked to the organisation.
Although Merchant claimed he had not been instructed to kill any specific individual, prosecutors told the court that discussions with Iranian handlers had included references to Trump as well as former US President Joe Biden and former US ambassador and governor Nikki Haley.
The scheme, according to evidence presented in court, relied on coded language linked to Merchant’s garment trade, with terms such as “denim”, “fleece” and “T-shirt” allegedly referring to different operational elements of the assassination plan, while “yarn dye” was said to represent the act of killing itself.
The conspiracy unravelled after a Pakistani-American acquaintance, who had previously worked as a translator for the US military, informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and agreed to act as an informant.
Secret recordings captured conversations in which Merchant allegedly outlined the assassination scheme during meetings in Queens, even sketching operational plans on a napkin while using everyday objects to represent potential targets.
The purported hit men whom Merchant believed he had recruited were in fact undercover FBI agents, and he had already transferred a payment of 5,000 dollars intended as an advance for the killings, funds that prosecutors said had been channelled through relatives abroad.