FBI seeks Iranian agent ‘planning to assassinate US officials’

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has revealed that it is pursuing an Iranian intelligence agent believed to have been planning to assassinate American officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in retaliation for the killing of General Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike raid in Baghdad approved by former US President Donald Trump. Over the past four years, the Iranian government has vowed repeatedly to avenge the killing of the head of foreign operations in the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

US media outlets have quoted officials as saying that there is growing evidence that Iran and its allies are working in the US. The FBI office in Miami issued a public warning seeking information about Majid Dastjani Farahani, 42, who is suspected of being a member of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

“Farahani, an Iranian intelligence officer, is wanted for questioning in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations in the United States, to include lethal targeting of current and former United States Government officials as revenge for the killing of IRGC-QF Commander Qasem Soleimani,” said the FBI. “He also reportedly recruited individuals for surveillance activities focused on religious sites, businesses and other facilities in the United States.”

American officials also noted that they believe that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s special envoy to Iran, Brian Hook, were on Tehran’s target list. The US government has been providing both with around-the-clock security.

The Department of Justice in Washington accused members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2022 of conspiring to kill Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, who served in the White House in the months before Soleimani’s killing.

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