Accusations that Iran plotted to assassinate former President Trump are “baseless and malicious,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations told Fox News Digital.
A federal law enforcement source told Fox News that authorities had received information from a private source in recent weeks about an Iranian plot to assassinate President Trump, which led to increased Secret Service protection.
The plot does not appear to be related to the shooting of Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, the suspect who shot Trump at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, over the weekend, according to people familiar with the matter.
The information prompted the Secret Service to increase the number of security personnel assigned to Trump after the agency grew increasingly concerned about the former president hosting an outdoor event and had conveyed its concerns to the Trump campaign.
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Former President Trump, his face covered in blood, gestures after shots rang out during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. (Reuters/Brendan McDiarmid)
“The Secret Service and other agencies constantly receive new potential threat information and take steps to adjust resources as needed,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The Secret Service cannot comment on specific threat streams other than to say that it takes threats seriously and is responding accordingly.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Trump campaign and the Department of Homeland Security.
Iran’s UN mission said the allegations were untrue.
“In the eyes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mr. Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring Mr. Trump to justice,” the statement said.
Since the January 2020 killing of Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, President Trump has become an increasingly prominent target for Iranian attack.
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In 2018, Iranians burned an American flag during an anti-American demonstration in front of the former U.S. Embassy headquarters in Tehran. (Ali Mohammadi/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Soleimani He was killed in a US military strike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020, days after supporters of an Iranian-backed militia stormed the US Embassy in Iraq.
“It would be a historic mistake to pretend that the IRGC doesn’t mean what it says… Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei harbors a personal animosity toward Trump due to his historic decision to target top Iranian terrorist Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020,” said Behnam Ben Talebr of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an expert on Iran’s global threat network.
News of the alleged threats comes as Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani is due to visit New York this week for a United Nations meeting.
Iranian terrorist leader General Qassem Soleimani (Associated Press)
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“The US government should deny a visa to the Iranian regime’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani,” said Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, head of the Anti-Nuclear Iran Coalition. “Kani is visiting New York at a time when Iran is engaged in assassination and kidnapping attempts against Americans on US soil.”
“Previous visits by Iranian officials to the United States have been accompanied by delegations that have problematic ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has been spearheading operations against Americans,” he added.
