Iran targets US elections – and Trump

On October 2, 2024By Rgal Nv

A tyrannical foreign regime is doing everything in its power to put its favored candidate in the White House.

But in 2024, this is not a fantasy scenario of Russia becoming Donald Trump’s president.

Instead, this is a deadly, earnest effort by Iran to help Kamala Harris — and kill Trump.

On July 12, the day before Trump’s first assassination attempt, a Pakistani national named Asif Merchant was arrested in a murder-for-hire investigation as he prepared to flee the United States.

Merchant, whose family lives in Tehran as well as Karachi, is accused of attempting to solicit the assassinations of several past and present U.S. officials.

Although prosecutors have not released the names of his targets, a high-ranking law enforcement source confirmed to NBC News that Trump was on the hit list.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said the plot was “orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian regime’s playbook.”

The Iranian playbook also includes incitement to kill the former president while he plays golf: Two years ago, Iran released an animated video showing a remote-controlled gun shooting Trump on a putting green in West Palm Beach.

The video is not entirely realistic: It takes place at Mar-a-Lago, which does not have a golf course, rather than the nearby Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach, where the second assassin is located Trump potential Ryan Routh planned to kill the Republican last month.

Merchant arrived in the United States in April from Pakistan, after spending time in Iran – and landed on the FBI’s radar.

He presented himself as an agent of foreign interests to the gunmen he hoped to hire.

But the associates to whom he paid $5,000, as an advance on the contract, were undercover FBI agents.

Merchant has no plausible connection to Thomas Crooks, the sniper who shot Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Blogger Marcy Wheeler, who is no fan of Trump, however, wonders whether Merchant or middlemen like him were involved in planning Routh’s homicide.

When he was arrested, Wheeler notes, “Routh had six cell phones in his truck, at least two of which were using different carriers, and four other cell phones in the box he left at a neighbor’s house. »

Merchant was also savvy about cellphone security, according to Justice Department filings, although he didn’t go as far as Routh.

Routh’s attempts to become involved in Ukraine’s defense against Russia could have shed light on his sense of operational security.

But in his self-published book “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” Routh also denounced Trump’s breaking of Barack Obama’s Iran deal and openly called on Tehran to assassinate the former president: “You are free to assassinate Trump. »

The Trump campaign claims that U.S. intelligence informed the candidate of Iran’s “real and specific threats to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”

“Great threats to my life are from Iran,” Trump himself said on the social network “

Tehran wants more than revenge on Trump for the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was Iran’s main exporter of state terrorism.

He wants a return to the complacent days of the last Democratic administration, when Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the “Iran deal” – eased sanctions and freed up billions of dollars in assets benefit of the Islamic Republic.

Liberals accuse Trump of being cozy with dictators, but the dictators of Iran’s cruel and corrupt regime find comfort only in Trump’s Democratic opponents.

The reward they put on Trump’s head is just the boldest of the Iranians’ attempts to dictate the outcome of our elections.

They also provided Democrats, progressive activists and the media with data stolen from the Republican campaign.

Why doesn’t this threat to the integrity of our elections – and to American lives – receive a fraction of the attention that Russian propaganda receives?
Media bias against Trump doesn’t explain everything: Iran’s murderous reach in America extends to many other victims, including Salman Rushdie, who lost an eye and the use of a hand after a fan of Hezbollah tried to kill him on stage during a second event. years ago.

Iran’s influence in the Middle East is weakening as Israel eliminates its Hezbollah and other proxies.

Yet here in America, Tehran finds hope – if the right candidate wins in November.

The terrorist state hopes that a Harris administration will be as flexible as Obama’s and can pressure Israel to end its war against Iran’s proxies.

When Americans go to the polls, they will need to take this foreign interference seriously – and give no satisfaction to Iran.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To learn more about Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com.

See Other political comments.

See Other comments from Daniel McCarthy.

The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments on this content should be directed to the author or the syndicate.