The FBI issued a public alert for fugitive Majid Dastjani Farahani, an Iranian agent “wanted for questioning in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations in the United States.”
Farahani is allegedly trying to recruit assassins to kill Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in revenge for the 2020 airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian terrorist mastermind Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Iranians lift national flags during a ceremony in the capital Tehran, on January 3, 2022, commemorating the second anniversary of the killing of Qassem Soleimani (ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)
The FBI alert stated:
Farahani also reportedly recruited individuals for surveillance activities focused on religious sites, businesses, and other facilities in the United States. Farahani acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
According to the FBI, the 41-year-old Farahani speaks Farsi, French, Spanish, and English and has frequently traveled to Venezuela. His current mission is to recruit “individuals for operations in the U.S., to include lethal targeting of current and former officials.”
Intelligence-focused news site Semafor speculated Tuesday that the FBI issued the alert for Farahani through its Miami bureau due to his familiarity with Venezuela.
Semafor quoted unnamed U.S. officials who said they believe Pompeo and Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s special envoy to Iran, are on “Tehran’s hit list.”
“The U.S. government is currently providing both men with around-the-clock security due to the severity of the threat,” the report said.
Hook said, during testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, that he requires a security detail because Iran could still be planning to assassinate him.
“I wish we were in a place that it was not necessary, but that is where we are,” he said.
Hook’s testimony became a significant controversy when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) noted that the Biden administration took the “unprecedented step” of classifying its notification to Congress that Hook and other Trump administration officials are under threat from Iran.
Cruz said the Biden administration was “abusing the classification system” to keep the threat secret because “they find public discussion of Iran’s aggression politically inconvenient because it gets in the way of their appeasement of the regime.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) broke up a 2022 plot by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to murder former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton. One of the IRGC agents posed as a journalist writing a book on Bolton to obtain information about him. Semafor’s sources seemed to think Bolton may still be a target.
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