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The US Justice Department on Wednesday announced the criminal charges against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps for allegedly trying to assassinate John R Bolton, who served as the national security adviser to former President Donald J Trump.
The alleged plot can be the retaliation for the January 2020 US air strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Justice Department said as quoted by CNN.
After the strike, leaders of the terrorist organization vowed "revenge against Americans" for Soleimani's death and publicly lashed out against then-President Donald Trump and other high-ranking officials in his administration.
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has reacted to US accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran without providing evidence.
The spokesperson of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Kanaani, said, "US judicial authorities have raised accusations without providing valid evidence and necessary documents in a new fiction in the continuation of the country's endless accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran and in the continuation of their failed Iranophobic policy."
Kanaani added, "Such baseless claims are made with political goals and motives, and in fact, it is an escape forward, propaganda, and especially evading the responsibility for numerous terrorist crimes either the US government has been involved in, like the cowardly assassination of Martyr General Soleimani, or they have been carried out with the support and backing of the United States, such as the terrorist crimes of the Zionist regime and terrorist groups such as Daesh."
In a statement on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani called it the "continuation of the failed Iranophobic policy" and "new scenario creation" by the American judicial authorities.
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He said there was "no evidence" to prove that Shahram Poursafi orchestrated a plot to assassinate the former US national security advisor, who was highly critical of Iran.
Meanwhile, in the US, the Prosecutors said that Shahram Poursafi, an IRGC member, attempted to pay USD 300,000 to an individual in the US to kill Bolton and said he had a "second job" for USD 1 million, according to CNN.
According to the source, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was also a target of the Iranian assassination plot. Here, the "second job" was a reference to Pompeo, the source revealed.
Pompeo was one of the administrators who served Trump at the time of the airstrike that killed Soleimani. He was informed directly by the Justice Department last Wednesday that he was the second target of an IRGC assassination plot, a source close to Pompeo told CNN.
According to the court documents, Poursafi, who has been arrested for a long period of time, contact an individual who happens to be the FBI informant.
Poursafi asked the informant to take photos of Bolton "for a book that Poursafi was writing," according to court documents.
He later asked if the informant could hire a person to "eliminate someone," who was later revealed to be Bolton, and promised protection for the CHS and the assassin, prosecutors said.
Poursafi has been charged with the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, which carries a 10-year maximum prison sentence and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot, which carries up to 15 years in prison, CNN reported.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
