Mike Wendling BBC News
9 hours in the past
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The FBI warning included a grainy photograph of Farahani.
The FBI is investigating an Iranian spy suspected of involvement in a plot to kill present and former U.S. authorities officers.
The company has accused Majid Farahani, 42, of plotting revenge for the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, was assassinated in Iraq in January 2020 by a U.S. drone strike.
The FBI mentioned Farahani labored on behalf of Iran’s intelligence ministry.
In a discover posted Friday, the FBI mentioned it was looking for questioning of Majid Dasjani Farahani in reference to recruiting for operations within the United States.
Farahani travels between Iran and Venezuela and likewise recruits individuals for “surveillance efforts centered on spiritual websites, companies and different services” within the United States, officers mentioned.
In December 2023, Farahani and one other alleged intelligence official had been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.
The BBC has contacted Iranian officers in Washington and New York for remark.
Iranian officers have vowed revenge for Soleimani’s killing. Soleimani was extensively seen as Iran’s second strongest man on the time of his loss of life. He was killed on the Baghdad airport together with a number of different Iranians on the orders of then-President Donald Trump.
The Quds Force, led by Soleimani, is a division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that makes a speciality of irregular warfare and army intelligence.
It operates outdoors Iran and helps teams resembling Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. The United States considers the Quds Force a terrorist group.
During the drone strike in Iraq, Trump mentioned the final was “straight and not directly liable for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”
Iran’s supreme chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded that “extreme revenge awaits the criminals” who carried out the assault.
In response to the Iranian risk, the U.S. authorities supplied safety particulars to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s particular envoy to Iran, Brian Hook. The security measures are persevering with below President Joe Biden’s administration, in line with the Associated Press.
Image supply, Getty Images
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Detailed safety data supplied to Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
In August 2022, the Justice Department indicted Iranian spy Shahram Poursafi on suspicion of plotting to kill Bolton.
The BBC’s US associate CBS News mentioned court docket filings referred to Mr Pompeo as a “secondary goal”.
Earlier this 12 months, 84 individuals had been killed in a bomb assault on a crowd in Kerman, southern Iran, to commemorate the anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination.
Iran initially claimed that Israel and the United States had been behind the assault, earlier than the Islamic State claimed accountability.
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Video: Moment crowd disperses after lethal bomb explosion in Iran