On Thursday, the US imposed penalties against a group of Iranian and Turkish individuals and businesses allegedly involved in a plot to kill dissidents, dual citizens of the US and Iran, and former US government employees.
According to the United States, two top officials of Iran’s Intelligence Organization, a company connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, three individuals with residences in Iran and Turkey, and two others are accused of plotting to assassinate journalists and activists. Treasury Division.
The sanctions on them forbid Americans and American businesses from doing business with them and ban all access to their money and property in the United States.
The Iranian military has “engaged in numerous assassination attempts and other acts of violence and intimidation against those they perceive as enemies of the Iranian regime,” according to a statement by Brian E. Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The U.S. remains committed to foiling these plots.
In recent years, several purported assassination plans have been exposed.
Last year, an Iranian assassin named Shahram Poursafi was accused of planning to assassinate John Bolton, a former national security adviser for the United States, in alleged vengeance for an American bombing that claimed the life of Iran’s most powerful general, Qassem Soleimani.
The Justice Department contended that Poursafi had offered to pay $300,000 to “eliminate” the Trump administration official.
The FBI has issued an arrest warrant for Poursafi on suspicion of participating in the murder-for-hire conspiracy after American investigators recognized him as a member of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
In January 2020, Soleimani, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force and the mastermind behind Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East was assassinated in a targeted airstrike as he left Baghdad’s international airport.
According to the prosecution, the plan took shape more than a year later.
Following the attack, Bolton, who had since resigned from his position in the White House, tweeted, “Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”
The 15 Khordad Foundation, which offered a multimillion-dollar bounty for the death of British-American novelist Salman Rushdie, who was brutally murdered in August at a literary event, was also sanctioned by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in October of last year. Rushdie wrote “The Satanic Verses,” which is regarded as blasphemous by some Muslims.
American officials said the 15 Khordad Foundation increased their reward to $3.3 million as recently as 2012, saying the total amount would be awarded to whoever assassinated Rushdie.
During months of anti-government protests in Iran and Western rage over Iran’s transfer of attack drones to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, tensions between the U.S. and Iran are at an all-time high.
JOIN US ON WHAT'SAPP, TO GET INSTANT STATUS UPDATES AND BE IN THE KNOW.
CLICK HERE
