U.S. Intelligence Warns about Iranian Assassination Plots

Iran’s terrorism campaign targeting top current and former U.S. government officials continues, according to a National Counterterrorism Center report obtained by Yahoo News. 

The center reportedly sent an assessment on the threat to law-enforcement offices across the country last month.

In the document, the National Counterterrorism Center reportedly warned that Iran is advancing a “multipronged campaign” against several U.S. officials, and especially those who played a role in the killing of Iranian Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani.

“Since January 2021, Tehran has publicly expressed a willingness to conduct lethal operations inside the United States and has consistently identified former President Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, and former CENTCOM Commander General Kenneth McKenzie as among its priority targets for retribution,” the report stated. “Iran would probably view the killing or prosecution of a US official it considers equivalent in rank and stature to Soleimani or responsible for his death as successful retaliatory actions.”

The report cited a number of incidents linked to Iran’s campaign against the U.S., including the attempted kidnapping of Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad last year.

Yahoo quotes the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Behnam Ben Taleblu as calling it “baffling” that the Biden administration has not abandoned its talks with Iran over the assassination plots.

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed to confirm during a congressional hearing that Iran was targeting current U.S. officials. Previously, it was reported that Iranian terrorism plots are specifically aimed at Pompeo, in addition to former national-security adviser John Bolton.

In recent weeks, U.S. officials have attempted to break the logjam that has restricted Washington’s nuclear talks with Tehran. Officials from the U.S. and Iran held indirect negotiations in Qatar last month — the first discussions since March — which were reported to have adjourned without any substantive breakthroughs.

The two sides have been at an impasse over Iran’s demands that the U.S. lift its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. U.S. officials have claimed for months that they would not lift the designation, a stance that President Biden described again today during an interview with an Israeli television network.

In a statement to Yahoo, the National Security Council pledged that the U.S. “will protect and defend its citizens,” without commenting directly on the intelligence report, and said that U.S. reentry into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is “in America’s national interest.”