US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that an Iranian official behind an attempt to assassinate Donald Trump in 2024 has been killed by the US military.
The US president was the subject of two assassination efforts that year while running for the White House, one of which involved a sniper’s bullet grazing his ear.
Here’s what we know about the other alleged plot.
Trump’s revenge on alleged plotter
Mr Hegseth said Mr Trump had the “last laugh” after the US forces killed an unnamed Iranian official who led an effort to assassinate him.
He told reporters during an operational briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday: “Also, yesterday, the leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed.
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“Iran tried to kill President Trump and President Trump got the last laugh.”
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The defence secretary said eliminating the author of the alleged plot was not the initial focus of the war “by any stretch of the imagination” and insisted Mr Trump had never made it a priority for the Pentagon.
He said he and others ensured “that those who were responsible for that were eventually part of the target list” but he admitted, as far as the conflict was concerned, “this is not a mission accomplished situation”.
What do we know about the man behind the plot?
In November 2024, the US justice department charged an Iranian man, Farhad Shakeri, 51, over an alleged effort by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to assassinate Mr Trump, then the president-elect.
Merrick Garland, the US attorney general at the time, said in a statement that Shakeri was “an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump”.
The justice department says Shakeri told law enforcement he was tasked on 7 October 2024 with providing the IRGC with a plan to kill Mr Trump but he didn’t intend go through with the plan within the timeframe set by the Iranians.
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Two other men, Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, both from New York, were also charged, having allegedly been “recruited as part of that network”.
Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt were charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and money laundering. Shakeri was also charged with two terror offences and other offences.
Tehran has denied accusations it targeted Mr Trump and other US officials.
Trump ‘got him’ first
Mr Trump referred to the alleged Iranian plot on Sunday when asked about the joint US-Israel operation that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“I got him before he got me,” he told ABC News.
