Mike Wendling BBC News
March 5, 2024
picture caption,
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. officers.
The company has accused Majid Farahani, 42, of plotting revenge for the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
Iran’s Quds Force commander Soleimani 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 the investigation 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 targeted on spiritual websites, companies and different amenities” within the United States, officers mentioned.
In December 2023, Farahani and one other alleged intelligence official have 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 broadly seen as Iran’s second strongest man on the time of his demise. 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 navy intelligence.
It operates outdoors Iran and helps teams equivalent to 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 overall was “immediately and not directly chargeable for the deaths of thousands and 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 offered safety particulars to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s particular envoy to Iran, Brian Hook. The security measures are persevering with underneath President Joe Biden’s administration, in response to the Associated Press.
Image supply, Getty Images
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Detailed safety data offered 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 companion CBS News mentioned court docket filings referred to Mr Pompeo as a “secondary goal”.
Earlier this 12 months, 84 individuals have been killed in a bomb assault on a crowd in Kerman, southern Iran, to commemorate the anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination.
Iran initially claimed Israel and the United States have been behind the assault, earlier than the Islamic State claimed duty.
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Video: Moment crowd disperses after lethal bomb explosion in Iran