The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced this week new sanctions against officers in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for their efforts to assassinate U.S. government officials.
OFAC sanctioned Majid Dastjani Farahani and Mohammad Mahdi Khanpour Ardestani for having “recruited individuals for various operations in the United States, to include lethal targeting of current and former U.S. Government officials as revenge for the death of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani.”
“Farahani and Ardestani also recruited individuals for surveillance activities focused on religious sites, businesses, and other facilities in the United States,” the announcement said. “Farahani and Ardestani are being designated for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, pursuant to E.O. 13553.”
The Treasury Department said that Iran was involved with aggressively targeting and stifling opponents and dissenting voices around the world through detention, torture, and assassinations both at home and abroad. The Islamic regime targets everyone from activists and journalists to foreign government officials.
🚨🚨The Treasury Department announces that Iranian intelligence agents are recruiting assassins to kill current and former U.S. government officials and surveil religious sites and businesses. pic.twitter.com/4b6y0CYExP
— Gabriel Noronha (@GLNoronha) December 8, 2023
A CBS News “60 Minutes” segment that aired this week reported last month that former Trump administration officials have 24/7 security from federal law enforcement officials because the threats are serious.
Iran reportedly hired a hitman to kidnap or kill former national security adviser John Bolton, who now lives with Secret Service posted outside his home after the administration killed Soleimani, arguably the top military official in Iran who was responsible for a large portion of the terrorism in the region and around the world.
Iran typically tries to hire hitmen who are already a part of criminal enterprises to carry out their assassination plots on foreign soil.
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In the U.S., Iran reportedly hired a private investigator to follow dissident activist Masih Alinejad around, take photographs of her, and document her whereabouts. They initially planned to kidnap her, but when the plot failed, they paid a man $30,000 to attempt to murder her at her home in Brooklyn.
Matt Jukes, head of Counter Terrorism Policing in Britain, said that Iran uses proxies to carry out assassination attempts because they are typically “not being tracked by intelligence or security agencies.”
He said that in the U.K., they have foiled 15 Iranian kidnapping and assassination attempts in the last year.
“I have been involved in national security policing for over 20 years,” he said. “What we’ve seen in the last 18 months is a real acceleration.”