March 9, 2026, 10:31 p.m. ET
A federal jury has convicted an Iranian operative of taking part in a 2024 terrorism attempt and plot to assassinate President Donald Trump, well before the war in Iran.
Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national also known as Asif Raza Merchant, was found guilty of murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries.
Merchant, 47, was trained by Iran’s global terrorist force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which he admitted at trial dispatched him to the United States to steal documents and arrange for political assassinations. According to a Justice Department complaint filed in 2024, Merchant told a source the targets would be people hurting Pakistan and the Muslim world, “not normal people.”
However, the plot was foiled by law enforcement before any attack could be carried out.
“Iran’s terrorist regime sent Asif Merchant here to sow mayhem and murder,” said Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a U.S. Justice Department news release. “Thanks to the vigilance of our law enforcement partners, his scheme ended in failure. Today, with Merchant’s conviction, that failure is complete.”
In a statement released at the time, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray called the plot “straight out of the Iranian playbook.”
Merchant, who faces up to life in prison, came to the U.S. in April 2024 and met two months later in New York with undercover law enforcement officers posing as hitmen. He was arrested before leaving the country in July 2024.
“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump,” said U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement.”
As set forth in trial exhibits and testimony, including the defendant’s own testimony, Merchant began working for the Revolutionary Guard Corp in Pakistan in late 2022 or early 2023, receiving training in tradecraft, including countersurveillance. Later in 2023, he was sent to the U.S. to seek out potential corps recruits.
Merchant said he knew the corps was a designated terrorist organization and repeatedly traveled to Iran to meet with his corps handler. In 2024, court documents said, he was sent back to the U.S. with a new mission – to recruit people to steal documents and arrange for the murder of one of three specified U.S. government officials and politicians.
Merchant then contacted Nadeem Ali, a New York acquaintance he thought could help with the scheme, according to the documents. Instead, Ali reported Merchant to law enforcement and became a confidential source. Nadeem Ali is a pseudonym and not the man’s real name.
Merchant laid out the plot to Ali in person in June 2024, the documents continued, saying he had an opportunity for Ali while making a “finger gun” gesture with his hand, signifying a murder. The victims would be “targeted here” in the U.S., he said while asking Ali to arrange meetings with people he could hire to carry out the plot.
At that meeting, the documents said, Merchant used a napkin and other objects to depict various assassination scenarios, quizzing Ali on how a target might be killed in each. He said the murder would take place after he left the U.S. and that he would communicate with Ali from overseas using code words.
Merchant told Ali his contact back home had ordered him to “finalize” the plan and then leave the U.S., the documents said. He later testified that that contact was his Revolutionary Guard Corps handler.
In June, the documents said, Merchant met with the purported hitmen in New York, saying he sought several services, including document theft, arranging protests at political rallies and assassination of a “political person.” He said they would receive instructions as to the target after he had left the country.
Around the same time, according to the documents, Merchant conducted internet searches for political rally locations and reported back to his handler about security protocols at the events.
On June 21, 2024, Merchant met with the undercover officers in New York and paid them $5,000 obtained with help from a person overseas as an advance payment for the assassination.
As detailed in the documents, once Merchant handed over the money, one of the officers said: “Now we’re bonded.”
When Merchant responded yes, the officer added: “Now we know we’re going forward. We’re doing this.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Merchant responded.
Merchant made flight arrangements and planned to depart the U.S. on July 12, 2024. He was arrested before he could leave the country.
“This was not the first attempt by Iran to harm out citizens on U.S. soil,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “The other efforts also failed. Let this verdict serve as a reminder that the FBI is committed to detecting such threats and preventing acts of violence.”
The verdict comes as federal counterterrorism agencies remain on high alert for potential retaliatory attacks on American soil following strikes on Iran by U.S. and Israeli forces and the assassination of the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran has already launched retaliatory strikes on U.S. military bases across the Middle East, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian vowing “bloodshed and revenge.”
The regime has a decades-long history of terrorist plots on U.S. soil and against Americans overseas, including schemes targeting Iranian dissidents and former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton.
