Washington. The Justice Department on Friday revealed criminal charges in an Iranian murder-for-hire plot targeting Donald Trump, charging a man allegedly directed by an Iranian government official before this week’s election to assassinate the Republican president-elect.

Investigators uncovered the assassination plot while interviewing Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who had been deported from the US after serving prison time on robbery charges. Shakeri told investigators that a contact within Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard ordered him in September to develop a surveillance and assassination plan against Trump within seven days, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.

Two additional men, whom authorities allege were recruited for other assassination plots—including one targeting a prominent Iranian American journalist—were also arrested Friday. Shakeri remains in Iran.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

The unsealed charges, revealed just days after Trump’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris, reflect what federal officials describe as ongoing Iranian efforts to target U.S. officials, including Trump, on American soil. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a similar murder-for-hire scheme.

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