Washington earlier warned Tehran that the assassination of an American official would be seen as “an act of war,” reports say
Iran sent the US a written assurance prior to the US election that it did not have any plans to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, several American media outlets reported on Friday.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Tehran delivered the message in mid-October in a bid to defuse rising tensions and in response to a written warning Washington had made to it in September. CBS News reported at the time that the US had made it clear to Iran that the administration of President Joe Biden would interpret the assassination of a former US president or official as “an act of war.”
Trump, a long-time Iran hawk, spearheaded the US withdrawal from the landmark nuclear deal with Tehran in 2018, while reinstating a raft of crippling economic sanctions. In 2020, Trump also authorized a strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force and a popular figure inside the country.
The WSJ noted that Iran’s assurance about not seeking to kill Trump was not signed by a specific official. According to the paper, it reiterated that the president-elect had committed a “crime” by ordering Soleimani’s assassination.
The reports about Tehran’s message come after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) claimed last week that Iranian officials had solicited an Afghan national to “provide a plan” to kill Trump while tasking him with carrying out assassinations of US and Israeli citizens inside the US. In August, the DOJ also alleged that Iran had sent a Pakistani national to the US to carry out murders, with one potential target being the incoming president. Iran has denied plotting to kill Trump in either case.
The president-elect survived two assassination attempts this election cycle. The closest call was in July when a bullet fired by Thomas Matthew Crooks at a rally in Pennsylvania grazed Trump’s ear.
Meanwhile, WSJ sources close to Iranian officials insisted that Tehran wants to avoid a confrontation with the Trump administration. While a previous report by the paper suggested that the president-elect was planning to return to the “maximum pressure” strategy and target Iran’s oil revenue, the New York Times claimed that Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, recently met in secret with the Iranian ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid, to “defuse tensions.”
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