Pompeo also targeted in an Iranian assassination plot: reports

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was targeted in an Iranian assassination plot along with former national security adviser John Bolton.

A source close to Pompeo told Axios the former secretary of state was on Shahram Poursafi’s hit list. The Department of Justice (DOJ) formally charged Poursafi on Wednesday with planning to hire someone to kill Bolton and another unnamed individual.

The DOJ formally charged Poursafi on two counts: using interstate commerce facilities to commission a murder-for-hire scheme and attempting to provide material support for a transnational murder plot. He faces up to 25 years in prison for the combined charges.

The Hill has reached out to the DOJ for confirmation.

The DOJ says Poursafi attempted to pay someone $300,000 to kill Bolton in Washington, D.C., or Maryland, while he offered a $1 million payment to kill a second individual that was not disclosed on Wednesday.

In a conversation relayed in the charging documents, Poursafi references the second job to a confidential source and says it involved a “former high-ranking United States Government official from the Trump Administration.”

The Department of State reportedly spent more than $131 million on protection service detail between August 2021 and February 2022 on protection for Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook. The two were receiving 24-hour security as of March.

Bolton told CNN on Wednesday his Secret Service detail was pulled the day he resigned from the Trump administration in 2019, but that President Biden restored his protection amid concerns about threats on his life.

The DOJ said that Poursafi, an Iranian nationalist and a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps., was likely targeting Bolton and the second individual to retaliate against the U.S. for the January 2020 drone strike and killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

Pompeo served as secretary of State from 2018 until the end of the Trump administration in January 2021.