Tehran - (AFP) - Tehran on Thursday rejected US court accusations of a plot led by a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to assassinate former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton , describing them as "ridiculous".

The US Justice Department confirmed Wednesday that Shahram Poursafi, 45, also known as Mehdi Rezaei, has been charged in absentia for offering to pay $300,000 to people in the United States to kill Bolton, who also previously served as the US ambassador to the United Nations.

It seems that the plot was aimed at avenging the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in January 2020, with an American raid, and the person who was supposed to kill Bolton revealed it to the authorities, and his identity was not revealed.

On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani rejected the "ridiculous" US accusations.

"The US judicial authorities issued accusations without providing evidence," he said.

The US accusations come as Tehran is studying a settlement offered by the European Union to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, which has been stalled since the United States withdrew from it in 2018, at the request of former US President Donald Trump, of whom Bolton was his adviser at the time.

In the past months, Iran has demanded that the Revolutionary Guard be removed from the US blacklist of "foreign terrorist organizations", in exchange for a return to implementing its commitments in the nuclear deal.

"It is not the first time we have uncovered a plot by Iran to retaliate on American soil, and we will work tirelessly to detect and prevent every such attempt," said US Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen.

According to the indictment, Shahram Boursafi, at the end of 2021, contacted a person who was supposed to carry out the assassination, but was in fact an informant with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Shahram Boursafi instructed him to open an account in digital currency, then gave him the address of a former Donald Trump advisor and asked him to implement the plan before the first anniversary of Soleimani's killing.

Soleimani was the architect of his country's strategy in the Middle East, and the commander of the Quds Force, the unit responsible for foreign operations within the Revolutionary Guards. He was killed on January 3, 2020, in an American strike by a drone in Baghdad.

But after the date of the anniversary of Soleimani's killing passed, Shahram Boursafi continued to pressure the informant to kill Bolton and promised him $1 million in exchange for the assassination of a second person, if the operation succeeded.

The FBI issued a search warrant for Shahram Boursafi, along with several photos, two of which show him wearing the uniform of the Revolutionary Guards.

The US judiciary stated, "During the exchange of conversation, the confidential source referred several times to Bursafi's association with the Quds Force. Bursafi never denied it."

Shahram Boursafi faces up to 25 years in prison, if caught, which is unlikely because he may be in Iran.
John Bolton considered the 2015 nuclear deal a "big strategic mistake".

And when he served as National Security Adviser under Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019, Bolton publicly supported Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the agreement aimed at ensuring the civilian nature of Iran's nuclear program.

The indictment asserted that Bolton was informed of the scheme and cooperated with investigators.

John Bolton stressed Thursday that it is important to note "the extent to which the Iranian government has carefully considered (this project) and participated in the planning."

He said on CNN that this shows how "Tehran behaves with regard to its terrorist activities," as well as how it conducts its "foreign policy."

The current National Security Adviser at the White House, Jake Sullivan, warned on Twitter that Tehran was exposing itself to "serious consequences" if it attacked US officials.

The US judiciary did not specify the identity of the second target, but the Axios website mentioned that it was former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The site quoted a source close to the former foreign minister as saying that the Ministry of Justice confirmed to him "directly" that he was one of the targets.

Along with John Bolton, Pompeo was one of the main architects of the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" policy on Iran.