伊朗参与了1979年人质危机、科尔号爆炸案、9/11事件以及对唐纳德·特朗普的暗杀威胁
作者：查尔斯·克里茨，福克斯新闻
发布时间：2026年3月1日 美国东部时间上午6:00
1979年激进学生推翻伊朗国王后，美国大使馆人质事件爆发，这个中东国家成为其新建立的伊斯兰原教旨主义独裁政权长期所称的”大撒旦”的激烈且血腥的对手。
自那时起，德黑兰在全球范围内资助恐怖主义，其中包括多次高调针对美国的行为。前里根司法部首席幕僚马克·莱文周日表示，至少有44起伊朗直接或间接针对美国人的事件。
“伊朗纳粹政权…已经谋杀了超过1000名美国人，并无情地追求核武器以对抗我们——他们是种族灭绝的战争贩子，”莱文（作家、律师和福克斯新闻频道主持人）说道。
伊朗从美国盟友转变为敌人的舞台在20世纪60年代就已搭建，当时国王穆罕默德·礼萨·巴列维开始与有影响力的伊斯兰神职人员鲁霍拉·霍梅尼发生冲突。君主通过自由宪法改革激怒了神权主义者，允许非伊斯兰教派根据其选择的圣书宣誓就职。
流亡法国的霍梅尼在所谓的”白色革命”期间（1963-1979）加强了他的言论，包括发表厌女症和仇外情绪的布道，并要求推翻巴列维。
早期对美国的侵略
由于巴列维是亲美领导人，这标志着代理对抗的早期实例。1978年秋季，在霍梅尼策划的抗议活动爆发后，国王宣布实施军事管制，宪兵向大规模抗议人群开枪。
巴列维和法拉赫王后很快以”度假”名义逃离伊朗前往埃及，但再也没有回来。到1979年2月，霍梅尼在大量教派支持下返回德黑兰。
卡特政府的失败策略演变为人质危机
卡特国家安全顾问兹比格涅夫·布热津斯基——”早安乔”主持人米卡·布热津斯基的父亲——创造了”危机弧线”一词，并推进了最终失败的”绿色地带”战略，该战略支持中东地区一系列基本不稳定但由原教旨主义政权组成的弧线，这些政权也被视为反对苏联。
布热津斯基设想的缓冲战略很快崩溃，因为霍梅尼被证明既反美也反苏。
1979年10月，在伊朗新动荡期间，经过数月关于是否允许他进入美国的辩论后，吉米·卡特总统最终同意允许身患癌症的国王在纽约接受医疗护理。
同年11月，”伊玛目路线穆斯林学生追随者”组织突袭美国大使馆，开始了52名美国人人质444天的囚禁生涯。
美国于次年4月断绝外交关系，一次营救行动失败导致数名美国军人死亡。国王于当年夏天在埃及去世，霍梅尼全面掌控政府。
1981年1月20日，里根政府就职仅几分钟后，伊朗突然释放人质，这被视为对卡特的最后冒犯。
黎巴嫩人质危机
根据”反对伊朗核化联盟”组织的资料，1982年7月5日，被称为黎巴嫩人质危机的长期事件开始，真主党和伊朗代理组织在黎巴嫩系统性绑架外国人，包括美国人。
该组织由前佛罗里达州州长杰布·布什和前大使马克·华莱士创立，在其网站上详细记录了伊朗侵略历史，是一个无党派政策组织，致力于打击伊斯兰共和国的威胁。
在黎巴嫩人质危机期间，多名受害者被真主党监禁数年，遭受心理和医疗折磨，其中包括中央情报局贝鲁特站站长威廉·巴克利（与《国家评论》创始人同名但无亲属关系）。
巴克利被黎巴嫩真主党精神科医生兼医学专家阿齐兹·阿布杜博士折磨数月，后者据报道强迫他服用吩噻嗪类药物，并对其进行实验以诱导审讯，并将其作为对西方的警告。
据报道，巴克利于1985年6月3日在监禁期间死于这些实验。
中央情报局后来在弗吉尼亚州兰利总部的墙上纪念他，奥巴马时期局长约翰·布伦南在2014年声明中表示：”我们纪念比尔，不是因为他死亡的方式，而是因为他留下的遗产。从他作为陆军上校到在中情局任职期间，比尔激励周围的人在危险条件下成就伟大事业。”
中情局后来抓获了与真主党有关联的伊斯兰圣战恐怖组织头目——在近25年后，这被华盛顿研究所描述为罕见的当代中情局暗杀行动。
伊马德·穆格尼耶的组织于1985年10月宣布处决巴克利，但实际日期后来确定，据称他不是死于处决，而是死于医疗折磨的副作用。前人质大卫·雅各布森告诉研究所，巴克利在牢房中经常生病和谵妄，最终在一次酷刑后”死于自己的肺液中”。
美国大学贝鲁特分校当时校长大卫·多奇也被绑架约一年，美国记者特里·安德森被监禁超过六年。
里根时期的爆炸和美国军人谋杀
1983年4月18日，伊朗支持的一个组织（被视为今日黎巴嫩真主党的前身）炸毁了美国驻贝鲁特大使馆，造成63人死亡，其中包括17名美国人。
同年10月，一辆与伊朗有关联的自杀式卡车炸弹袭击了美国在黎巴嫩的海军陆战队营房，造成241名军人死亡，这仍是海军陆战队自硫磺岛战役以来最致命的单日事件。
根据中东媒体研究协会（MEMRI）对霍梅尼驻黎巴嫩代表赛义德·伊萨·塔巴塔巴伊接受伊朗伊斯兰共和国通讯社（IRNA）采访的翻译：”我迅速前往黎巴嫩，提供了必要的支持以在美以所在地执行殉道行动。”
他补充道：”建立真主党的努力始于黎巴嫩的巴勒贝克地区，伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队成员抵达那里。我没有参与建立真主党政党，但真主使我能够与在伊斯兰革命胜利前与我们合作的组织继续军事活动。”
MEMRI报告称：”值得注意的是，塔巴塔巴伊承认收到霍梅尼针对黎巴嫩美以目标发动袭击的宗教法令的部分内容，在IRNA网站发布后不久就被删除。这显然是因为从未有官方代表霍梅尼（伊斯兰共和国之父）或哈梅内伊（伊朗最高领袖）声称伊朗参与下令、策划和实施针对美国在黎巴嫩的大规模爆炸。”
1985年，伊朗支持的真主党劫持了从雅典起飞的环球航空公司（TWA）847航班。劫机者收集乘客身份，特别挑选了来自马里兰州沃尔多夫的美国海军建设营队员罗伯特·斯泰瑟姆，误将其视为海军陆战队员，并指责他参与黎巴嫩内战。
劫机者在飞往贝鲁特途中折磨斯泰瑟姆，随后将其枪杀并抛尸跑道，又补枪一次。
“祈祷螳螂”行动
1988年，美国海军”塞缪尔·B·罗伯茨”号在波斯湾触雷并险些沉没。该舰当时正在护航科威特油轮作为保护措施。
在确认水雷来自伊朗船只”阿杰尔”号（该船于当年早些时候被美军捕获）后，里根总统立即采取报复行动。
里根政府的行动摧毁了两座据称被伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队用作监视设施的石油平台，导致伊朗开始攻击非军事目标。
此次任务还击沉了另外两艘伊朗船只，被认为是二战以来最大规模的海军水面战斗。
行动中直升机坠毁导致两名美国人死亡，数十名伊朗军官被击毙。
克林顿-布什-奥巴马时期；9/11事件
联邦调查局将1996年沙特阿拉伯美军住房区袭击事件与另一个伊朗支持的恐怖组织联系起来。
真主党阿尔-希贾兹组织被指控策划了当年6月的”霍巴塔爆炸案”，造成19名美国军人死亡。
2000年，基地组织袭击也门亚丁港美国海军”科尔”号驱逐舰后，美国法院认定伊朗间接负有责任，因为它通过允许恐怖分子在黎巴嫩与伊朗有关联的真主党基地接受训练来支持恐怖分子。
2015年，外国情报监控法（FISA）法官鲁道夫·孔特雷拉斯裁定伊朗和苏丹负有责任，拜登政府期间，苏丹同意就被谋杀水手家属的索赔达成和解。
“9·11″事件后，美国在伊拉克发动战争，伊朗及其代理组织被怀疑通过向伊拉克什叶派叛乱分子提供地雷造成大量美军伤亡。2019年，美国国防部正式将估计数提高到600多名直接与伊朗或其代理组织有关的美军伤亡，这意味着伊拉克战争损失的六分之一是伊朗造成的。
海军指挥官肖恩·罗伯逊当时告诉《陆军时报》：”这些伤亡是由成型装药（EFP）、其他简易爆炸装置（IED）、简易火箭推进弹药（IRAM）、火箭、迫击炮、火箭推进榴弹（RPG）、轻武器、狙击火力和在伊拉克的其他袭击造成的。”
在特朗普政府第一任期内，总统下令打击伊斯兰革命卫队，击毙其传奇指挥官卡西姆·苏莱曼尼。
虽然伊朗没有直接参与2001年9月11日纽约、宾夕法尼亚和弗吉尼亚的具体袭击事件，但被发现参与了恐怖主义计划的便利。
由前新泽西州共和党州长汤姆·基恩领导的报告发现伊朗官员与基地组织之间存在”持续接触”。
报告第七章指出，伊朗至少知道真主党培训的恐怖分子将针对美国和/或以色列采取行动。这些发现驳斥了批评者的说法，即这个逊尼派恐怖组织可以与统治伊朗的什叶派宗教死敌共存。
德黑兰边境巡逻官员也没有在基地组织成员在该地区旅行时在护照上盖章，因为盖章会在申请美国签证时被发现。
2016年，与伊斯兰革命卫队有关联的黑客被司法部起诉——包括一名34岁的伊朗国民，据称他侵入了纽约州莱伊布鲁克一座主要水坝的控制系统，该水坝位于287号州际公路和新英格兰收费公路交汇处附近。
2011年，美国还挫败了一起伊斯兰革命卫队针对美国本土的阴谋，其中计划炸毁华盛顿特区一家餐厅以杀害美国驻沙特大使阿德尔·朱拜尔。
伊朗裔美国公民曼苏尔·阿尔巴巴西亚和圣城部队成员戈拉姆·沙库里被指控参与此案。阿尔巴巴西亚在纽约肯尼迪机场被捕，沙库里仍在逃。
联邦调查局一名机密消息人士当年7月在墨西哥与阿尔巴巴西亚会面，嫌疑人同意支付150万美元悬赏的10万美元，以换取杀害朱拜尔，据司法部称。
时任联邦调查局局长罗伯特·穆勒当时表示，此次逮捕表明美国”有能力整合必要的情报和执法资源，更好地识别和破坏这些威胁，无论其来源如何。”
拜登政府时期
到2020年，伊朗被指责对最近几起商业油轮袭击负责。特朗普下令杀死苏莱曼尼后，阿亚图拉阿里·哈梅内伊派遣弹道导弹袭击伊拉克的阿萨德空军基地。
数十名美国军人受伤。
2023年10月7日哈马斯武装分子屠杀以色列人后，伊朗支持的哈马斯和真主党向该地区西方部队发动约180次袭击，包括对约旦一个基地的无人机袭击，造成三名美国人死亡。
特朗普时期：针对总统的暗杀阴谋
一名阿富汗出生的伊朗代理人和两名美国男子被指控企图追捕并暗杀一名批评伊朗政权的伊朗裔美国人后，司法部披露特朗普也成为类似暗杀阴谋的目标。
费尔哈德·沙基里在纽约州因抢劫罪被判14年监禁，曾在美国建立犯罪同伙网络，据称目的是”向伊斯兰革命卫队提供国内行动人员”，他被指控试图杀害经常出现在福克斯新闻的记者马西·阿利内贾德。
截至2024年，沙基里仍然在逃，可能在伊朗境内，但他的美国同伙已在布鲁克林受审。
根据美国司法部长梅里克·加兰的说法，史泰登岛的乔纳森·洛德霍尔姆和布鲁克林的卡莱尔·里维拉据称”作为该网络的一部分被招募，以在美国领土上沉默并杀害一名一直批评该政权的美国记者”。
“我们不会容忍伊朗政权危害美国人民和美国国家安全的企图，”加兰表示，刑事申诉称沙基里和里维拉在服刑期间首次会面。
两人跟踪阿利内贾德，还被指控在洛德霍尔姆的汽车上轮换车牌以避免怀疑，而时任联邦调查局局长克里斯托弗·雷在关于阿利内贾德案件的相关声明中提到特朗普也是伊朗阴谋的目标。
据《纽约时报》报道，沙基里据称从伊朗自愿向联邦调查局陈述，披露了暗杀特朗普的企图。
沙基里称，在那年10月的一次伊斯兰革命卫队会议后，他被指示制定刺杀特朗普的计划，如果无法实施，民兵组织认为特朗普将输给卡玛拉·哈里斯，”在卸任后更容易暗杀”。
“多亏了联邦调查局的辛勤工作，他们的致命计划被挫败。我们致力于动用联邦调查局的全部资源，保护我们的公民免受伊朗或任何其他针对美国人的对手的威胁，”雷当时在一份声明中表示。
特朗普此后多次警告伊朗退缩，战争部长皮特·赫格塞特监督了2025年对核设施的空袭，政府最终采取了所谓的长期军事行动以迫使政权更迭。
“我们的目标是通过消除伊朗政权的迫在眉睫威胁来保护美国人民，”特朗普周六表示。
福克斯新闻数字版记者本杰明·魏因塔尔对本文有贡献。
查尔斯·克里茨是福克斯新闻数字版记者。他于2013年加入福克斯新闻，担任作家和制作助理。查尔斯报道媒体、政治和文化，毕业于天普大学广播新闻专业。有关文章建议可发送至charles.creitz@fox.com。
From hostage crisis to assassination plots: Iran’s near half-century war on Americans
Iran had its hand in the 1979 hostage crisis to the Cole bombing, 9/11 and assassination threats against Donald Trump
By Charles Creitz
Fox News
Published March 1, 2026 6:00am EST
After radical students overthrew Iran’s shah in 1979 and took hostages in the U.S. embassy, the Middle Eastern nation became a strident and blood-soaked adversary of what its new Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship has long called the “Great Satan.”
Since then, Tehran has sponsored terrorism around the globe, including targeting the U.S. in multiple, high-profile instances. Former Reagan Justice Department Chief of Staff Mark Levin said Sunday there are at least 44 examples of Iran targeting Americans either directly or indirectly.
“The Iranian-Nazi regime … [has] murdered more than 1,000 Americans [and] relentlessly pursued nuclear weapons to use against us — they are genocidal warmongers,” said Levin, an author, attorney and Fox News Channel host.
The stage for Iran’s transformation from ally to enemy of the U.S. was set in the 1960s, when Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi began clashing with influential Islamic cleric Ruhollah Khomeini. The monarch infuriated the theocrat by liberalizing the national constitution to allow faiths other than Islam to be sworn into office on holy books of their choice.
Khomeini’s rhetoric from France, where he was exiled, intensified during the period known as the White Revolution, including misogynistic and xenophobic sermons and demands that Pahlavi be ousted.
Early aggression toward the US
With Pahlavi as a U.S.-aligned leader, this marked an early instance of antagonism by proxy. As protests engineered by Khomeini broke out in fall 1978, the shah declared martial law, and military police fired on a massive crowd of protesters.
Pahlavi and Empress Farah Pahlavi soon fled on a “vacation” to Egypt but never returned. By February 1979, Khomeini returned to Tehran with significant sectarian support.
Failed Carter strategy develops into hostage crisis
Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski — the father of “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski — coined the term “arc of crisis” and advanced an ultimately failed “Green Belt” strategy that supported an arc of largely unstable but fundamentalist regimes across the Middle East that were also viewed as oppositional to the Soviet Union.
Brzezinski’s envisioned buffer strategy soon collapsed when Khomeini proved to be just as anti-American as anti-Soviet.
In October 1979, after months of debate over whether to admit him to the U.S. amid the new turmoil in Iran, President Jimmy Carter relented and permitted the cancer-stricken shah to seek medical care in New York.
That November, the group “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line” stormed the U.S. embassy, beginning 444 days of captivity for 52 American hostages.
The U.S. severed diplomatic ties the following April, and one rescue mission failed and left several U.S. servicemembers dead. The shah died that summer in Egypt, leaving Khomeini in full control of the government.
In what was seen as the final offense to Carter, Iran suddenly released the hostages minutes into President Ronald Reagan’s administration on Jan. 20, 1981.
Lebanon hostage crisis
On July 5, 1982, the years-long saga known as the Lebanon Hostage Crisis began with the systematic abductions of foreigners, including Americans, by Hezbollah and Iranian proxies in the Mideast country, according to United Against a Nuclear Iran.
That group, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Ambassador Mark Wallace, maintains a comprehensive history of Iranian aggression on its website and is a nonpartisan policy organization formed to combat the threats posed by the Islamic Republic.
During the Lebanon Hostage Crisis, several victims spent years imprisoned by Hezbollah, where they were forced to undergo psychological and medical torture, including CIA Beirut Station Chief William Buckley, who was not related to the National Review founder of the same name.
Buckley was tortured for months by Dr. Aziz al-Abub, a Lebanese Hezbollah psychiatrist and medical expert who reportedly forced him to take phenothiazines and experimented on him to induce interrogation and make an example of him to the West.
Buckley reportedly died in custody amid these experiments on June 3, 1985.
The CIA later memorialized him on its wall in Langley, Va., and Obama-era Director John Brennan said in a 2014 statement that “we remember Bill not for the manner in which he died but for the legacy he left behind. From his time as an Army lieutenant colonel to his tenure with the Agency, Bill inspired those around him to do great things despite often dangerous conditions.”
The agency later caught up with the figurehead of the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Jihad terrorist group — carrying out what the Washington Institute described as a rare contemporary CIA assassination nearly 25 years later.
Imad Mughniyeh’s group had announced Buckley’s execution in October 1985, but the actual date was determined later, with allegations that he died not from execution but from the side effects of the medical torture he endured. Former hostage David Jacobsen told the institute that Buckley was often sick and delirious in his cell and ultimately died “drowning in his own lung fluids” after a bout of torture.
David Dodge, then-president of the American University in Beirut, was also kidnapped for about a year, and U.S. journalist Terry Anderson was held in captivity for more than six years.
Reagan-era bombings and murders of American servicemembers
On April 18, 1983, an Iran-backed group seen as the predecessor to today’s Lebanese Hezbollah bombed the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans.
That October, a suicide truck bomb linked to Iran hit a U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 servicemembers, in what remains the deadliest single day for the Corps since Iwo Jima.
According to the MEMRI translation of Khomeini’s representative to Lebanon, Sayyed Issa Tabatabai’s interview with the IRNA: “I quickly went to Lebanon and provided what was needed in order to [carry out] martyrdom operations in the place where the Americans and Israelis were.”
He added, “The efforts to establish [Hezbollah] started in [Lebanon’s] Baalbek area, where members of [Iran’s] Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) arrived. I had no part in establishing the [political] party [Hezbollah], but God made it possible for me to continue the military activity with the group that had cooperated with us prior to the [Islamic] Revolution’s victory.”
The MEMRI report continued, “It is noteworthy that the part of the interview in which Tabatabai acknowledged receiving Khomeini’s fatwa ordering attacks on American and Israeli targets in Lebanon was removed by IRNA from its website shortly after publication. This is apparently because no official representative of Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Republic, or of Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, had ever said that Iran had any involvement in ordering, planning and carrying out the massive bombings in Lebanon against U.S.”
In 1985, Iran-backed Hezbollah hijacked Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 847 as it departed Athens. The hijackers collected IDs from the passengers and singled out U.S. Navy Seabee Robert Stethem of Waldorf, Md., mistaking him for a Marine and blaming him for involvement in the Lebanese Civil War.
The hijackers tortured Stethem as they flew to Beirut before shooting him dead, dumping him on the tarmac, and shooting him again.
Operation Praying Mantis
In 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf and nearly sank. The Roberts had been escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers as a protective measure.
After the mines were matched to the Iranian ship Ajr, which had been captured by the Americans earlier that year, President Reagan sprang into retaliatory action.
Reagan’s operation destroyed two oil platforms reportedly used as Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) surveillance structures, leading Iran to begin attacking nonmilitary targets.
The mission also claimed two other Iranian ships and was considered the largest naval surface engagement since World War II.
Two Americans died in a helicopter crash during the operation, while dozens of Iranian officers were killed.
Clinton-Bush-Obama era; 9/11
The FBI linked a 1996 attack on an American military housing complex in Saudi Arabia to another Iranian-backed terrorist group.
Hezbollah al-Hejaz was blamed for the Khobar Towers bombing in June of that year, which killed 19 U.S. servicemembers.
In the aftermath of Al Qaeda’s 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole destroyer in Aden, Yemen, American courts found Iran indirectly liable in that it provided support for the terrorists – in part by letting them be trained in Tehran-linked Hezbollah bases in Lebanon.
In 2015, FISA Judge Rudolph Contreras found Iran and Sudan liable, and during the Biden administration. Sudan agreed to settle claims of murdered sailors’ families.
After 9/11, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq, Iran and its proxies were suspected of causing a large portion of American casualties by supplying land mines to the Iraqi Shia insurgents. In 2019, the Department of Defense officially raised its estimate to more than 600 troop casualties directly tied to Iran or its proxies, meaning one in six Iraq War losses were caused by Tehran.
Navy Cmdr. Sean Robertson told the Army Times at the time that “these [American] casualties were the result of explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), other improvised explosive devices (IEDs), improvised rocket-assisted munitions (IRAMs), rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), small arms, sniper fire, and other attacks in Iraq.”
During his first term in the White House, President Donald Trump ordered a strike on the IRGC, killing its legendary commander, Qassem Soleimani.
While Iran was not directly implicated as having specific knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, it was found to be complicit in facilitating the planned terrorism.
The report, led by former New Jersey Republican Gov. Tom Kean Sr., found a “persistence of contacts” between Iranian officials and Al Qaeda.
Chapter 7 of the report found that Iran at least knew that the terrorists being trained by Hezbollah were going to act against the U.S. and/or Israel. The findings thereby blew apart critics’ claims that the Sunni terror group could get along with its religious archenemy, the Shia who ran Iran.
Tehran border patrol officials also did not stamp passports of Al Qaeda operatives traveling around the region, as the marking would have been flagged upon application for any U.S. visa.
In 2016, hackers linked to the IRGC were indicted by the Justice Department – including one 34-year-old Iranian national who allegedly gained access to the controls of a major dam in Rye Brook, N.Y., near the confluence of Interstate 287 and the New England Thruway.
In 2011, the U.S. also foiled an IRGC plot targeting the homeland, in which a District of Columbia restaurant was to be bombed to kill Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Adel al-Jubeir.
Iranian-born U.S. citizen Manssoor Arbabsiar and Quds Force member Gholam Shakuri were charged in the incident. Arbabsiar was arrested at New york’s JFK Airport and Shakuri remains at large.
A confidential federal source met with Arbabsiar in Mexico that July, where the suspect agreed to pay $100,000 toward a $1.5 million bounty placed on al-Jubeir, according to the Justice Department.
Then-FBI Director Robert Mueller said at the time that the arrests depict the U.S. “increased ability … to bring together the intelligence and law enforcement resources necessary to better identify and disrupt those threats, regardless of their origin.”
Biden era
By 2020, Iran was blamed for several recent attacks on commercial oil tankers, and after Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dispatched ballistic missiles at Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq.
Several dozen U.S. troops were wounded.
After Hamas militants massacred Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah launched about 180 attacks on Western forces in the region, including a drone strike on a base in Jordan that killed three Americans.
Trump era: Assassination plot on the president
After an Afghan-born Iranian proxy and two American men were charged with allegedly trying to hunt down and assassinate an Iranian-born American critic of the ayatollah’s regime, the Justice Department disclosed that Trump was also the subject of a similar assassination plot.
Farhad Shakeri, who had spent 14 years in a New York state prison for robbery and made U.S. contacts to create a “network of criminal associates” to “supply the IRGC with operatives” domestically, was allegedly seeking to kill Masih Alinejad — a journalist who often appears on Fox News Channel.
Shakeri remained at large, likely in Iran, as of 2024, but his American counterparts were put on trial in Brooklyn.
Jonathon Loadholt of Staten Island and Carlisle Rivera of Brooklyn allegedly “were recruited as part of that network to silence and kill, on U.S. soil, an American journalist who has been a prominent critic of the regime,” according to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security,” Garland said, as the criminal complaint suggested Shakeri and Rivera first met while serving time.
The two men stalked Alinejad and were also accused of rotating plates on Loadholt’s car to avoid suspicion, while then-FBI Director Christopher Wray mentioned Trump as another target of an Iranian plot in a related statement on the Alinejad case.
Shakeri reportedly spoke to the FBI voluntarily from Iran, where he disclosed efforts to assassinate Trump, according to The New York Times.
Shakeri said he was told to create a plan to kill Trump after an IRGC meeting that October and that, if he could not, the assumption from the militia was that Trump would lose to Kamala Harris and be “easier to assassinate” while out of office.
“Thanks to the hard work of the FBI, their deadly schemes were disrupted.We’re committed to using the full resources of the FBI to protect our citizens from Iran or any other adversary who targets Americans,” Wray said in a statement at the time.
Trump has since warned Iran repeatedly to back down, with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth overseeing 2025 airstrikes on nuclear facilities, and the administration ultimately taking what it described as long-term military action to force regime change.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” Trump said Saturday.
Fox News Digital’s Benjamin Weinthal contributed to this report.
Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital.
He joined Fox News in 2013 as a writer and production assistant.
Charles covers media, politics and culture for Fox News Digital.
Charles is a Pennsylvania native and graduated from Temple University with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism. Story tips can be sent to charles.creitz@fox.com.
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