World News | U.S. sanctions Iranians suspected of assassinating ex-U.S. officials and dissidents

WASHINGTON, June 1 (AP) The United States announced sanctions on Thursday against a group of Iranian and Turkish individuals and companies accused of plotting to assassinate former U.S. government officials, dual U.S.-Iranian nationals and dissidents.

Three Iranian and Turkish nationals; a company affiliated with the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the country’s military; and two senior officials from Iran’s intelligence organization accused of involvement in a plot to kill journalists, according to the U.S. Treasury Department and activists.

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Sanctions against them block access to all their funds and property in the United States, and prohibit Americans and American companies from working with them.

The U.S. remains focused on a plot to undermine the Iranian military, which “performed numerous assassination attempts and other acts of violence and intimidation against those they considered to be enemies of the Iranian regime,” said Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Burr. Brian E. Nelson said in a statement.

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Several alleged assassination plots have been uncovered in recent years.

Iranian operative Shahram Poursafi was charged last year with plotting to kill former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, presumably in response to a U.S. airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful general, Qassem • Qassem Soleimani’s revenge. Poursafi is accused by the Justice Department of offering $300,000 to “get rid” of Trump administration officials. Poursafi, identified by U.S. officials as a member of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps, is wanted by the FBI in connection with a murder plot.

Prosecutors said the plan came more than a year after Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike on his way from Baghdad International Airport in January 2020. After the strike, Bolton, who had left his White House post at the time, tweeted, “Hopefully this is the first step of regime change in Tehran.”

In addition, last October, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on the 15 Khordad Foundation, which offered a multi-million dollar reward for the killing of an Anglo-American author who was violently attacked at a literary event last August Salman Rushdie. Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous.

As recently as 2012, 15 the Khordad Foundation raised its bounty to $3.3 million, claiming the full amount would go to anyone who kills Rushdie, U.S. officials said.

Tensions between the United States and Iran are high amid months of anti-government protests in Iran and Western anger over Iran’s export of attack drones to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)