US charges IRGC official, others in Iran-backed plot to assassinate journalist

The United States issued fresh charges over the attempted Tehran plot to kidnap and assassinate an Iranian-American journalist in New York, indicting an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) official among others in the case, according to a court document on Tuesday.

US prosecutors have previously charged other suspects in the case, including one man in 2022 and two more in January 2023. Tuesday’s filing did not name the alleged victim, but one of the previously charged suspects in the case was arrested for having a rifle outside the Brooklyn home of journalist and activist Masih Alinejad.

The IRGC official, Ruhollah Bazghandi, was a brigadier general who previously served as chief of the IRGC’s counterintelligence department, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn.

Bazghandi was previously sanctioned by the US Treasury Department. Prosecutors said that Bazghandi’s internet activity, as well as that of three other individuals whose names were unsealed on Tuesday, pointed to their involvement in multiple assassination plots.