Although court documents did not name potential victims and said Merchant allegedly planned to disclose the targets after he left the country, multiple media outlets reported that Trump was a possible target. Iran has vowed to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp’s Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad ordered by Trump on Jan. 3, 2020.
The case against Merchant, which is unrelated to the assassination attempt against Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, comes as Iran is now believed to be targeting the campaigns of Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris with cyberattacks and hacking operations, and with the Islamic Regime allegedly helping to finance anti-Israel protests on U.S. college campuses.
“Merchant’s foiled plot follows another scheme when an Iranian national and member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force orchestrated the attempted assassination of John Bolton, the former U.S. National Security Adviser,” the lawmakers wrote.
