Federal Prosecutors: Iran Assassination Plot Against Trump Remains Active
With Khamenei dead and Shakeri still at large, the legal record of a standing IRGC kill order against a sitting U.S. president raises unresolved questions about current threat response protocols.
A federal criminal complaint unsealed in November 2024 by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charges Iranian national Farhad Shakeri with conspiracy to assassinate President Donald Trump on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to the complaint, the IRGC tasked Shakeri with conducting surveillance and planning an assassination on October 7, 2024 — the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel. As of the date of this report, July 8, 2026, Shakeri has not been apprehended and remains at large in Iran, according to publicly available case records.
In a separate but related federal case, Asif Merchant — identified in court filings as an IRGC-linked operative — was convicted by a Brooklyn jury on charges of murder-for-hire conspiracy. The Merchant conviction is part of the public court record in the Eastern District of New York. Both cases were cited in reporting by the Washington Examiner on July 8, 2026, which noted the IRGC threat infrastructure persists following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The IRGC's Quds Force has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department since April 2019, a designation that remains in effect. Federal law under 18 U.S.C. § 1116 and § 1117 prohibits conspiracy to kill internationally protected persons, the statutory basis cited in the Shakeri complaint. The Department of Justice has not issued a public update on the Shakeri case since the November 2024 unsealing.
The threat context intersects with active U.S. foreign policy. Reporting as of early July 2026 indicates President Trump attended a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, where discussions included potential adjustments to sanctions and defense cooperation frameworks. Turkey's role as a geographic intermediary and its diplomatic relationships in the region are matters of public record in State Department and NATO communiqués, though no direct public link between the Ankara summit agenda and the IRGC threat cases has been established in available court or executive branch documents.
Several material facts remain unknown from public records alone. The current operational status of the IRGC threat program following Khamenei's death has not been addressed in any unsealed federal filing or official government statement as of this publication date. It is also unknown whether the Department of Justice has sought extradition through third-party channels, as no such request appears in publicly available diplomatic correspondence. The full scope of the Shakeri surveillance operation — including any co-conspirators identified but not yet charged — would be contained in sealed portions of the SDNY case file, docket number not yet publicly confirmed in available sources reviewed for this report.