John Bolton

The FBI believes that Poursafi was acting on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard when he sought to have Bolton killed, according to an affidavit unsealed ...

The Revolutionary Guard is a paramilitary organization formed in the wake of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend its clerically overseen government. “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. Poursafi told the person that he wanted “the guy” to be purged or eliminated. Since the U.S. withdrew from the agreement under President Donald Trump, Iran has sped up its nuclear enrichment program. The 2015 deal granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for tight curbs on its atomic program. 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.”

The Justice Department said that plan was likely set in retaliation for the US killing of top Guard commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq 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 his own statement, Bolton thanked the FBI and Justice Department for their work in developing the case and the Secret Service for providing protection. 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. “Poursafi added that he had an additional ‘job,’ for which he would pay $1 million,” the Justice Department said. Prosecutors say the scheme unfolded more than a year after 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. The Justice Department said 45-year-old Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, had offered to pay an individual in the US $300,000 to kill Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN.