Iran remains actively engaged in plots to assassinate senior officials from the Trump administration, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. Iran envoy Brian Hook, according to a confidential State Department notice sent to Congress and obtained by The Washington Free Beacon. The alert reveals ongoing “serious and credible” threats against both men, reportedly from Tehran, which has sought to retaliate against officials responsible for the U.S.’s hardline policies toward Iran.

The warning arrives amidst a contentious U.S. presidential election, with threats from Iran becoming a focal point. Former President Donald Trump, who was briefed on the threats last month, noted on social media that Iran has made “big threats on my life,” and indicated that previous assassination attempts had failed. “Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again,” he added, highlighting the persistent nature of the Iranian threat.

Pompeo and Hook were instrumental in the Trump administration’s strategy to isolate Iran through sanctions and other diplomatic efforts, a stance that has made them prime targets. According to The Washington Free Beacon, Congress has now been informed 20 times since January 2021 about credible threats against Hook, while Pompeo has been the subject of 17 such alerts. Both men, alongside former National Security Adviser John Bolton, remain under U.S. government protection due to these threats.

The issue has drawn bipartisan scrutiny. Earlier this year, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) accused the Biden administration of withholding information on Iran’s assassination plots, alleging that officials were “abusing the classification system” to avoid public discussion of Iranian aggression. “They find public discussion of Iran’s aggression politically inconvenient because it gets in the way of their appeasement of the regime,” Cruz argued in a Senate hearing.

The FBI confirmed in May that Iranian intelligence operative Majid Dastjani Farahani was actively recruiting individuals within the U.S. to execute lethal operations against former American officials. The FBI has named Farahani as a key player in Tehran’s strategy to seek vengeance against those involved in the 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force commander.

In a further escalation, Politico reports that Iran has a “hit list” of former Trump administration officials, with Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matt Olsen describing the threat as “extraordinarily serious.” Olsen stated, “Iran has made it very clear that they are determined to seek retaliation against former officials in connection with the Soleimani strike.”

The gravity of these threats was underscored in a 2022 documentary produced by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in which Hussein Mousavian, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator now at Princeton University, mocked the danger faced by Hook. In the documentary, Mousavian recounted, “I went to America, and an American told me that Brian Hook’s wife can’t sleep, she cries and trembles…that’s how much they were trembling,” suggesting the threats are intended to create lasting psychological effects on their targets.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)