The suspect in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, has ties to Iran, leading some security experts to question whether Iran was involved.
a The New York Times A reporter who interviewed Routh last year Written On Sunday, it was reported that Routh was working to recruit former Afghan special forces soldiers who had defected to Iran to fight in Ukraine.
Journalist Thomas Gibbons-Neff wrote that while he was working on a story about Ukrainian volunteers last year, his former Afghan colleague and friend, Nazim Rahim, introduced him to Raus, a former Afghan special forces soldier, through an Iranian source.
Many of the U.S.-trained Afghan special forces defected to Iran after President Biden withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021. Because these forces were trained by U.S. special forces, the defection of Afghan special forces to Iran may have given Iran “closely guarded secrets about U.S. special forces personnel,” according to an Iranian security expert. Foreign Policy.
Neff suggested that Afghan special forces were interested in fighting in Ukraine because “even war was preferable to the Afghans than the situation in Iran after the Taliban recaptured Kabul in August 2021.”
However, other media have reported that Iran and Russia are actually recruiting Afghan special forces to fight in Yemen and Ukraine.
According to a Voice of America report on November 7, 2022, former Afghan military commander General Haibatullah Alizai said: said“When former Afghan soldiers go to Iranian immigration offices to extend their visas, they are told to go to Yemen to fight in support of the Houthis.”
Mohammed Farid Ahmadi, a former commander of Afghanistan's elite National Army Special Forces, said According to VOA, former Afghan special forces now operate in “six key regions” of the world – Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, Yemen, Iran, Syria and Russia – but in “small groupings.”
And according to the report, Russia was offering them $1,500 a month and the promise of a safe haven for themselves and their families.
At a minimum, Routh's efforts to recruit former Afghan special forces personnel in Iran to fight in Ukraine would have placed him under scrutiny by the Iranian and Russian governments and exposed him to exploitation, manipulation, and even collaboration by Iran and Russia.
Although Routh has voiced hostility toward Russia, he also has a history of being sympathetic to Iran.
In 2023, he published his own e-book in which he said he was “ultimately a fool” for abandoning the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal and apologized to Iran for personally voting for Trump.
“I am just a man who can say I made an error of judgment and a terrible error,” he wrote. time. “You can assassinate Trump and me for this error of judgment.”
Although Routh appears to sympathize with Iran rather than Russia, the two countries reportedly cooperate closely in Ukraine. Published Russia is working with Iranian engineers to reverse engineer US-made military equipment captured on the front line in Ukraine, according to a Substack post by a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
Routh reportedly traveled to Ukraine and Washington, DC, where he met with US lawmakers, government officials and staff, and may have been seen as an attractive target for both Iran and Russia.
Routh too Suggested He worked with former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance, who also went to Ukraine as a volunteer with the Ukrainian military, and Rouse claims he was rejected from fighting for Ukraine because he was too old and lacked military experience.
of Times Gibbons-Neff Reported Routh revealed that he was trying to recruit Afghans in Pakistan to fight in Ukraine, and that he planned to buy fake passports for the recruits in Pakistan “because Pakistan is a very corrupt country.”
Mike Bentz, a cybersecurity expert and former State Department official, said in an interview that Routh Iranian conspiracy allegations A plot to kill Trump involving Iran and Pakistan.
he said in an interview with Voices of Real America on Tuesday. War Room Routh “is exactly the same operation that the CIA described a month ago,” Benz said.
Just a month ago, about five weeks ago, it was reported that the CIA foiled a plot to assassinate Donald Trump by a Pakistani individual with ties to Iran who was planning a hit-for-hire scheme to get someone in the United States to shoot Donald Trump.
Ryan Routh was looking for recruits from among Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban. Routh, who spent several months in Ukraine last year, said he planned to move soldiers from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine, sometimes illegally. Dozens of people expressed interest, Routh said. In fact, he said thousands expressed interest on his Facebook page.
And Ryan Routh continued, “You could probably buy a passport through Pakistan…” Ryan Routh is sending Pakistani nationals to fight through Iran. He's the man who reportedly plotted to assassinate Trump. A month ago, the CIA said they had advance knowledge of a plot to assassinate Trump that had to do with a Pakistani national traveling through Iran. Now, not to put the cart before the horse, Ryan Routh seems to be exactly the operation the CIA described a month ago.
Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino also spoke on Monday's show about possible Iranian involvement in the assassination attempt on President Trump.
“It's true that foreigners have used social engineering to ingratiate themselves with Secret Service agents,” he said. “The spies may not be foreign… Are there honeypot traps set up in the Secret Service? Are there men or women in the Secret Service who are having relationships with people they are not? The Iranians have set these traps in Israel and elsewhere. The Iranians want to kill President Trump and are documented to have been building long-range sniper threats against him for years.”
“How do we know that there isn't some sort of honeypot trap set up, that there isn't some agent or DHS employee liaising who should be notified? It's time to start asking serious questions,” he said.
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