OPINION:
The recent plot to kill Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course bears an eerie resemblance to a video released by the leader of Iran two years ago in which he vowed to assassinate Mr. Trump and showed computer-generated graphics of the former president playing golf on the course.
The video opens with images of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, then switches to animated graphics of him playing golf at his nearby course with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. One sequence shows the former president teeing off on what appears to be the sixth hole — near where Ryan Routh, the suspect in the apparent assassination attempt last weekend — had been hiding for 12 hours before a Secret Service agent opened fire on his exposed rifle barrel.
Iran’s leaders have made no bones about their intent to assassinate Mr. Trump and former members of his administration. They call it revenge for the targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad by the U.S. on Jan. 3, 2020.
I played a minor role in the decision to target Soleimani, head of the overseas expeditionary arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the Quds Force. Soleimani was responsible for the killing of more than 600 U.S. troops in Iraq as well as attacks on U.S. outposts across the Middle East.
As an FBI “agent-runner” working with defectors from Iranian intelligence, I helped the White House evaluate the threat posed by thousands of demonstrators converging on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad over the 2019-2020 New Year’s holiday. My sub-sources told me it was an effort coordinated by Soleimani to storm the embassy and take U.S. diplomats hostage.
That led the White House to order a drone strike on Soleimani shortly after he arrived at in Baghdad to take control of the operation in the early hours of Jan. 3, 2020.
I tell the full story of that attack, which has prompted the Iranian regime’s revenge against Mr. Trump, in a new book, “The Iran House,” scheduled to be released Oct. 15 by Post Hill Press.
The FBI has foiled numerous Iranian terror plots on U.S. soil since the Soleimani killing. Some were aimed at Iranian dissidents such as Masih Alinejad. Others targeted former Trump administration officials, including former national security adviser John Bolton.
In August 2022, an IRGC member, Shahram Poursafi, was charged with plotting to hire assassins to kill Mr. Bolton at his home outside Washington in retaliation for the Soleimani killing. (Ironically, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Bolton three months before he ordered the killing of Soleimani.)
In March, the FBI issued a “most wanted” notice for Iranian intelligence operative Majid Dastjani Farahani for his role in recruiting individuals in the U.S. to assassinate “current and former United States Government officials as revenge for the killing of … Soleimani.” Mr. Farahani remains a fugitive and was said to have ties to both Iran and Venezuela.
This past Monday, a Pakistani man arrested the day before the July 13 assassination attempt on Mr. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, pleaded not guilty to terror charges that resembled these assassination plots.
The feds accuse Asif Raza Merchant, 46, of plotting to assassinate an unnamed U.S. political figure on orders from Iran. So far, they have not suggested that Mr. Merchant or Iran was tied to the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life in Pennsylvania, nor have they identified which politician Mr. Merchant wanted to kill.
In their sealed indictment, released several weeks after they arrested Mr. Merchant, the FBI said it arrested him on July 12 at his New York home as he was preparing to leave the U.S. They made no mention of the attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump on July 13.
The indictment, however, charged that Mr. Merchant frequently traveled to Iran, had a wife and children there and traveled to Iran two weeks before coming to the United States in April in search of a hit man. In his discussions with a confidential source cooperating with the FBI, Mr. Merchant “indicated an affinity for Iran and told the [source] that the money they were using for the plot was ’halal,’ meaning permitted,” the indictment alleges.
The lead FBI agent investigating the case, Anthony Cipriano, made clear in his affidavit in support of Mr. Merchant’s arrest that he had “become aware that the Government of Iran has publicly stated its desire and intention to conduct operations targeting those perceived to be enemies of the Iranian regime, including Americans … to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani.”
He added that “the tradecraft and operational security measures used by Asif Merchant … are consistent with a person engaged in this type of plotting on behalf of a foreign adversary.”
Iran’s regime has made clear its desire to kill Americans and to carry out “revenge” attacks for the killing of Soleimani. So far, these attempts have been foiled — often by sheer luck, as when potential hit men or intermediaries contacted by the Iranian agents decide to become confidential FBI informants.
But the United States cannot rely on luck to defend our country and our leaders from Iran. Just as Israel made Hezbollah leaders understand that they would pay for continuing their rocket attacks on Israel by blowing up Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies last week, so the United States must make the Iranian regime understand that attacks on U.S. soil are off-limits.
How to achieve that deterrence, I leave to the professionals — both fiction writers and intelligence officers. They need each other today as much as they did during World War II, when the future creator of the James Bond series labored creatively for British intelligence against the Nazis.
• Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute and the author of 14 nonfiction works and four novels. His latest book, “The Iran House: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue,” will be released by Post Hill Press on Oct. 15.
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