Iran dismisses claims of assassination plot targeting Trump
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Iran rejects US allegations of a plot orchestrated by Tehran to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives for a news conference at the Trump National Golf Club, on March 8, 2016, in Jupiter, Florida. (AP)
Iran has firmly rejected "groundless" accusations of an assassination attempt on US soil aimed at Republican president-elect Donald Trump just weeks before the November 5 election.
In a statement released on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei dismissed the claims as "entirely unfounded and unsupported." This came one day after the US Department of Justice revealed criminal charges, which included details of an alleged plot backed by Iran to kill Trump before the election on Tuesday.
The criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York City alleges that an unnamed official from Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) directed someone to develop a plan to surveil and eventually kill Donald Trump. The complaint further details alleged efforts by the IRGC to assassinate him before the US presidential election in November 2024.
Baghaei stressed that the repetition of such claims at this juncture is “a malicious conspiracy by Zionist and anti-Iranian circles aimed at further complicating the issues between the United States and Iran.” This came after Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election on Wednesday.
Iran issues indictment against US in Soleimani's assassination case
It is worth recalling that in June, Iran issued an indictment against the United States government and American military officials regarding the 2020 assassination of Lieut. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force, Ali Alghasi-Mehr, the judiciary chief for Tehran province announced.
General Soleimani was assassinated on January 3, 2020, in a US drone strike in Iraq authorized by then-US President Donald Trump, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, his Iraqi trench-mate and the second-in-command of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units,
Martyr Soleimani was on an official visit to Iraq and was in a car with martyr al-Muhandis at Baghdad's International Airport when they were assassinated. In retaliation, Tehran launched missiles at the Ain al-Assad base in Baghdad, one of the largest US bases in Iraq.
Alghasi-Mehr mentioned on June 23 that a public trial of the defendants would take place within the next month, adding that "after collecting more than 12,000 pages of documents, the 164-page indictment was issued against 73 American officials regarding the martyrdom of Hajj Qassem Soleimani and his companions and was referred to Tehran Criminal Court number 1."
