A man accused of plotting to kill US President Donald Trump and other top politicians told the court on Wednesday he was pressured by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to organise their assassinations.
Pakistan national Asif Raza Merchant, 47, was charged in September 2024 with seeking to hire a hitman to assassinate unidentified US politicians. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The IRGC — Iran’s elite military organisation under direct command of the ayatollah — has previously sought to kill top US officials, including Trump, following the death of one of their commanders, Qasem Soleimani, in a US drone strike.
During his trial on Wednesday, Merchant testified that he was forced into the plot to protect his family in Tehran from the IRGC, adding that he thought he would get caught before anyone was killed, multiple media outlets reported.
He said he was never ordered to kill a specific person but noted his Iranian contact had mentioned three people in connection with the plot: Trump, former President Joe Biden and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.
“My family was under threat, and I had to do this,” Merchant told the court through an Urdu interpreter, according to media reports. “I was not wanting to do this so willingly.”
Merchant’s trial comes as the Iran war, sparked by the US-Israel military strikes which have resulted in the deaths of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials, continued into its sixth day.
US officials previously said Merchant had “close ties to Iran” and described his alleged plot as “straight out of the Iranian regime’s playbook.”
Merchant said this week he began working with a member of the IRGC sometime in 2022, when the man asked him if he was “interested in doing some work with the Iranian government,” US media reported.
He was eventually instructed to orchestrate a plot that involved arranging protests, stealing documents, laundering money and potentially having someone killed.
The New York Times reported that Merchant said he had been worried about what would happen to his wife and adopted daughter in Iran, so he agreed to the operation.
He was arrested after reportedly trying to hire hitmen who turned out to be undercover FBI agents.
