‘Baseless Myths’: Tehran Rejects US Claims That Iranian National Plotted to Kill John Bolton

Washington argues that an Iranian man’s alleged attempt to kill John Bolton was supposed to be retaliation for the January 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a top general from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who died in a US drone strike authorized by then-President Donald Trump.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has vehemently rejected US allegations that an Iranian national planned to assassinate former president Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton.

The Ministry’s spokesman Nasser Kanaani told reporters on Wednesday that “the spinning of these threadbare and baseless myths is becoming a recurring custom in the American judicial and propaganda system.”

According to Kanaani, “continuing their endless accusations” against Tehran and “their failed Iranophobic policy, the American judicial authorities, in a new yarn spinning, have raised accusations without providing valid evidence and necessary documentation.”

He insisted that “such baseless claims are made with political motives and aims and in fact amount to […] escaping the responsibility of responding to numerous terrorist crimes that the American government has either directly participated in, such as the cowardly assassination of General Martyr Soleimani, or like the terrorist crimes committed by the Zionist regime and terrorist groups like Daesh* with the support of America.”

Kanaani stressed that Tehran “strongly warns against any action against Iranian citizens under the pretext of these ridiculous accusations and emphasizes that it reserves the right to take any action within the framework of international law to defend the rights of the government and citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The statement comes after Shahram Poursafi, an alleged member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been charged by the US with plotting to kill Bolton.

In an announcement on Wednesday, the US Department of Justice argued that Poursafi, aka Mehdi Rezayi, 45, had "attempted to pay individuals in the United States $300,000 to carry out the murder [of Bolton] in Washington DC or Maryland.”

The Justice Department asserted that Poursafi was likely seeking revenge for the US assassinating top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in 2020.

Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed in a drone strike on their car at the Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020, in an attack that was ordered by then-US President Donald Trump.

The killings led to a major escalation of tensions between Tehran and Washington, with Iran officially responding by launching airstrikes against two Iraqi military bases housing US troops.

The strikes caused no deaths or serious injuries, but the Pentagon has since reported that at least 109 US servicemen have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries.

*Daesh (ISIL/ISIS/Islamic State), a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries