The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official and others it says took part in wide-ranging plots to kill former national security adviser John Bolton and others around the world, The Associated Press reported.
The sanctions accuse three people based in Iran and Turkey, a company affiliated with Iran’s Quds Force and two senior officials of Iran’s Intelligence Organization in global plots to kill former US officials, journalists and Iranian dissidents abroad, said the US Treasury Department.
Those sanctioned include Revolutionary Guard official Shahram Poursafi, who was charged last year with seeking to carry out a murder-for-hire, with US prosecutors saying he worked to find a US-based person willing to kill Bolton somewhere in the Washington area for $300,000.
Federal prosecutors say Poursafi also spoke of an “additional job” for which he was offering $1 million. It has been revealed that the Iranian assassination plot had also targeted former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as Bolton.
Poursafi remains wanted by the FBI in the alleged plots.
That plot centered on Iranian revenge for the death of top IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani, who was eliminated in a US drone strike in Iran in 2020.
Pompeo and former top Iran envoy Brian Hook both played a role in the Trump administration’s decision to kill Soleimani and led the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.
Last November, the State Department notified Congress that both Pompeo and Hook were still both subject to a “serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power” stemming from their work while in government.
The State Department has been paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security for Pompeo and Hook since they left office, and most recently extended that protection in early May, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Iran has repeatedly vowed to avenge the death of Soleimani. Last year, an animated video published on the website of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei depicted the assassination of former US President Donald Trump, who ordered the air strike that eliminated Soleimani.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)