Pakistani arrested in alleged Iran plot to kill U.S. official

A Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate a US official in retaliation for the US killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Asif Raza Merchant, 46, allegedly sought to hire a hitman to assassinate a politician or a US government official in the United States, the department said in a statement.

"For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran's brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani," Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

Soleimani, the head of Iran's foreign military operations, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020. Iranian officials have repeatedly vowed to avenge his killing.

"The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran's lethal plotting against American citizens," Garland said.

The intended victim was not identified but the attorney general said no evidence has emerged to link Merchant with the July 13 assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

FBI Director Christopher Wary said the Pakistani national had "close ties to Iran" and that the alleged murder-for-hire plot was "straight out of the Iranian playbook".

Another FBI official said the assassins Merchant allegedly tried to hire were in fact undercover FBI agents.

Merchant was arrested on July 12 as he planned to leave the country.

The spokesperson for Pakistan's foreign ministry, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, said in a statement that the government was in touch with US authorities over the matter.

Iran's mission to the United Nations said it had "not received any report on this from the American government".

"But it is clear that this method is contrary to the Iranian government's policy of pursuing Soleimani's killer," the mission said in a statement carried by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

In August 2022, the United States charged a member of the Revolutionary Guards with plotting to assassinate former US National Security Advisor John Bolton.

The Justice Department said Shahram Poursafi, who remains at large, had offered to pay an individual in the United States $300,000 to kill Bolton.

Iran has dismissed the claim that it had plotted to kill Bolton as "fiction."