The government of Iran denied an anonymous report by the left-wing U.S. outlet CNN claiming American law enforcement authorities had discovered evidence of an Iranian plot to kill former President Donald Trump, insisting Wednesday it had nothing to do with the assassination attempt.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry nonetheless insisted it would continue to “pursue legal action” against Trump for his order to conduct an airstrike in 2020 killing a top Iranian state terrorist, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Trump, currently the frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, was speaking at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday when a gunman shot at his head, narrowing missing his skull and injuring his ear. The shooter, who law enforcement eliminated shortly after the assassination attempt, killed one person, rallygoer Corey Comperatore and injured two others.
The Iranian government had not made any significant comment on the situation prior to the CNN article accusing it of preparing a similar assassination attempt, with the exception of veiled remarks by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The ex-president, who has since rebranded as a populist “reformer,” published a message that did not name Trump but appeared to reference the situation.
“Acts of terror and terrorism, both state and non-state, are among the most heinous anti-human actions, the depth of whose evil, words cannot fully express,” Ahmadinejad wrote. “Humanity is suffering such severe pains all over the world.”
Tehran broke its silence on Wednesday.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to pursue legal action against Trump for his direct role in the crime of assassinating Martyr General Qassem Soleimani,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani told reporters. “However, it strongly rejects any involvement in the recent armed attack on Trump or claims about Iran’s intention for such an action, considering such allegations to have malicious political motives and objectives.”
The Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV reported that Iran’s mission to the United States also rejected reports of any intention to kill Trump, dismissing the report as “unfounded and malicious.”
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M. Perdie, J. Knudsen / Breitbart News“The mission, nevertheless, asserted that ‘from the Islamic Republic’s standpoint, Trump is a criminal, who should be tried and punished in court for [issuing] General Soleimani’s assassination order,'” PressTV added.
CNN reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous people “with information,” that the Secret Service was aware of threats to Trump’s life coming from Iran. The sources claimed that the Secret Service told the Trump campaign of a potential Iranian assassination threat and, as a result, “Secret Service surged resources and assets for the protection of former President Trump. All of this was in advance of Saturday.”
CNN noted that no evidence indicates that the alleged Iranian plot had anything to do with the failed assassination of the president on Saturday, conducted by a man identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. Law enforcement has offered little information on the individual, none of it indicating any ties to the Iranian government or radical Islamic terrorism, which Iran funds around the world.
As the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism, Iran has been implicated in mass murders throughout the planet. On the Western Hemisphere, the deadliest incident tied to Iran was the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people at the time. An Argentine court found both Iran and its proxy terrorist organization Hezbollah responsible for both that bombing and a similar attempt in 1992 after a decades-long investigation that culminated in April.
The Trump administration’s foreign policy was actively hostile to Iran’s terrorist ambitions, declaring the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization and imposing strict sanctions on the Islamist regime. In January 3, 2020, Trump ordered an airstrike on Soleimani, the head of the IRGC Quds Force, while on a visit to Baghdad, Iraq, to coordinate with Iranian proxy terrorist organizations there. The airstrike also eliminated the head of the Iraqi terrorist group Kata’ib Hezbollah, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The U.S. government believes Soleimani’s widespread use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Americans prior to the airstrike.
“This should have been done for the last 15-20 years,” Trump said in 2020. “Him in particular [Soleimani]. He was their real military leader. He’s a terrorist. He was designated as a terrorist by [President Barack] Obama, and then Obama did nothing about it.”
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M. Perdie, J. Knudsen / Breitbart NewsThe Iranian government responded by declaring Soleimani a martyr and hosting mass events nationwide intending to depict Soleimani as a beloved patriot. During one of those events, a speaker urged the people to gather an $80 million bounty for Trump.
“We would give this $80 million, on our own behalf, as a gift to anyone who brings the head of the person who ordered the murder of the grand figure of our revolution,” the speaker declared, “anyone who brings us the head of this yellow-haired lunatic, we would give him $80 million on behalf of the great Iranian nation.”
The Iranian government has not formally offered such a bounty, but has prosecuted Trump and several of his top administration officials, prominently including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Tehrani courts issued arrest warrants for Trump and several other officials in June 2020. In December 2023, an Iranian court ordered Trump, Pompeo, and several other Americans and U.S. government agencies to pay the Iranian government nearly $50 billion in redress for the Soleimani airstrike. Trump is also barred from entering Iran, however, which makes his arrest in relation to the “crime” impossible.
The Iranian regime also attempted to convince Interpol to issue “red notices,” or requests for arrest, for Trump, Pompeo, and others, but its request was denied.
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