(The Hill) — The U.S. is offering a reward of up to $20 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of an Iranian man accused of plotting to assassinate former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.
The Department of Justice alleges Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), tried to hire criminals to assassinate Bolton, a former top official in the Trump White House, between October 2021 and April 2022 in Washington and Maryland in exchange for $300,000.
The U.S. charged Poursafi on Aug. 5, 2022, accusing him of being involved in a murder-for-hire plot and providing material support for a transnational murder plot. The Treasury Department designated him as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in June last year. He remains at large.
“Poursafi told the potential assassin – who actually became a confidential source for U.S. investigators – that once he completed the Bolton murder he would have a second assassination job for him,” the State Department press office said in a release Thursday.
The announcement of the reward comes days after the Trump campaign said the ex-president was briefed by intelligence officials about Iran’s alleged assassination threats against him. A Pakistan national, with ties to the Iranian government, was charged with one count in early August for plotting to conduct a political assassination in the U.S.
Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Javad Zarif rejected accusations that Iran has tried to assassinate government critics overseas, telling NBC News in an interview this week, “We do not assassinate people, but the fact of the matter is — they assassinated a revered Iranian general.”
Qassem Soleimani, a top general in the IRGC, was killed in a January 2020 drone strike authorized by then-President Trump. Bolton, a frequent critic of Iran, served as the ex-president’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.