Farhad Shakeri: US charges Iranian man over plot to kill President Donald Trump

US officials have revealed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by an Iran government official with planning the assassination.

Investigators were told of the plan to kill Trump by Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in US prisons for robbery.

Authorities say he maintains a network of criminal associates enlisted by Tehran for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots.

Shakeri told the FBI a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him in September to set aside other work he was doing and assemble a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.

The official was quoted by Shakeri as saying that “we have already spent a lot of money” and “money’s not an issue”.

Shakeri told investigators the official told him if he could not put together a plan within the seven-day timeframe, the plot would be paused until after the election because the official assumed Trump would lose and it would be easier to kill him then, the complaint said.

Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran. Two other men were arrested on charges that Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill prominent Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who has endured multiple Iranian murder-for-hire plots foiled by law enforcement.

“I’m very shocked,” said Alinejad, speaking by telephone to The Associated Press from Berlin, where she was about to attend a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the tearing down of the wall.

“This is the third attempt against me and that’s shocking.”

Lawyers for the two other defendants, identified as Jonathan Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera, did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Iran’s UN Mission declined to comment.

Shakeri, an Afghan national who immigrated to the US as a child but was later deported after spending 14 years in prison for robbery, also told investigators he was tasked by his Revolutionary Guard contact with plotting the killings of two Jewish-Americans living in New York and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.

The criminal complaint says Shakeri disclosed some of the details of the alleged plots in a series of recorded telephone interviews with FBI agents while in Iran.

The stated reason for his co-operation, he told investigators, was to try to get a reduced prison sentence for an associate behind bars in the US.

The plot, announced by the Justice Department just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, is part of what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials, including Trump, on US soil.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Friday.

FBI director Christopher Wray said the case shows Iran’s “continued brazen attempts to target US citizens”, including Trump, and “other government leaders and dissidents who criticise the regime in Tehran”.

Trump’s previous administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said the president-elect was aware of the assassination plot and nothing would deter him “from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world”.