[IsraelTimes] Operative reportedly offered $300,000 to ’eliminate’ former US national security adviser, in presumed retaliation for US Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM! ...
that killed top general Soleimani
An Iranian operative has been charged in a plot to murder former US national security adviser John Bolton in presumed retaliation for a US airstrike that killed the country’s most powerful general, offering $300,000 to "eliminate" the Trump administration official, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
Shahram Poursafi, identified by US officials as a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a US-designated terrorist organization, is currently wanted by the FBI
...Formerly one of the world's premier criminal investigation organizations, something for a nation to be proud of. Now it's a political arm of the Deep State oligarchy that is willing to trump up charges, suppress evidence, or take out insurance policies come election time...
on charges related to the murder-for-hire plot.
Prosecutors say the scheme unfolded more than a year after Qassem Soleimani
 , the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force and an architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East, was killed in a targeted airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport in January 2020. After the strike, Bolton, who by then had left his White House post, tweeted, "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran."
In the fall of 2021, Poursafi, an Iranian citizen who officials say has never visited the United States, offered $300,000 to someone he was corresponding with in the US if the person would hire someone to "eliminate" Bolton, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed Wednesday.
Two steps apart? That’s one way to blur the connection, I suppose, but surely would make it hard to ensure the hire could actually do the job. Poursafi told the person, who was actually an FBI informant, that he wanted "the guy" to be purged or eliminated.
| Oh lord — another one who got his FBI BFF involved in his brilliant plot. I s’pose that means he really did have killer skillz, though. |
Poursafi provided the person with Bolton’s office address, including the name and contact information for someone who worked in the office, and took screenshots of surveillance photographs of Bolton’s office, the affidavit says.
| Did he pay upfront, too? What about money for planned expenses? |
"This was not an idle threat," Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a statement released by the department. "And this is not the first time we’ve uncovered brazen acts by Iran
 ...They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
to exact Dire Revenge against individuals in the US."
Poursafi also tried to target former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, according to the Axios news site.
The gentleman certainly is ambitious... The Department of Justice informed Pompeo of the threat, the news site reported, citing a source close to Pompeo.
Ambitious, tracked, and traced. Allah clearly did not want him to succeed. In his own statement, Bolton thanked the FBI and Justice Department for their work in developing the case and the Secret Service for providing protection.
"While much cannot be said publicly right now, one point is indisputable: Iran’s rulers are liars, bully boyz and enemies of the United States," he said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Well, shoot. Now what do we do, Your Immensilocity?” The unsealing of the complaint comes two days after negotiators seeking to revive the Iran nuclear accord in Vienna closed on a "final text" of an agreement, with parties now consulting in their capitals on whether to agree to it.
Why bother? The 2015 deal granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for tight curbs on its atomic program. Since the US withdrew from the agreement under President Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and whatever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
, Iran has sped up its nuclear enrichment program. Bolton has been among the most hawkish critics of the deal and efforts by the Biden administration, the same old faces in slightly different places, the same old ideas, the same old graft
...the pack of self-imagined masterminds of strategy and intrigue at the service of the Biden Crime Family and a grateful nation...
to rejoin it.
In his statement, he said "Iran’s nuclear weapons and terrorist activities are two sides of the same coin" and asserted that America re-entering the failed 2015 Iran nuclear deal would be an unparalleled self-inflicted wound, to ourselves and our closest Middle East allies."
45-year-old Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi...
According to the charges, Poursafi tried to arrange Bolton's murder beginning in October 2021, when he contacted online an unidentified person in the United States, first saying he wanted to commission photographs of Bolton.
That person passed the Iranian onto another contact, who Poursafi then asked to kill Bolton.
He offered $250,000, which was then negotiated up to $300,000.
"Poursafi added that he had an additional 'job,' for which he would pay $1 million," the Justice Department said.
But that second person, court documents say, was a confidential source for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The ostensible assassin stalled, waiting for an initial payment, but only in late April did Poursafi send money, paying a total of $100 in cryptocurrency.
Poursafi was charged with the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, which brings up to 10 years in prison, and with providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot, which carries a 15-year sentence. 
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