Iran showing increasing boldness toward U.S. with spies, assassination plots, and hacks

An alleged agent indicted for giving sensitive information about the federal aviation system to the Iranian regime, plots to assassinate U.S. politicians including Donald Trump, and a hack-and-leak operation targeting campaigns are part of a growing body of evidence showing Iran is growing increasingly brazen in towards the United States. 

Joe Biden’s Justice Department has signaled that combating the growing threat from Iran is important to them, even as the administration has freed up millions of dollars for Iran. The hope was that the theocracy could be persuaded to re-enter an Obama-era nuclear deal. Critics say the Biden administration’s repeated deference to Iran has emboldened it and its regional proxy network, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, which have launched attacks against Israel and the U.S., respectively. 

"There are few actors in this world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said, promising that his agency is working to combat a wide range of Iran’s “malign activities,” including its assassination plots and election interference.

Evidence shows that Iran has grown increasingly brazen during the Biden administration, especially in its apparent attempts to organize the assassination of GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump.

“The U.S. government is intensely tracking Iran’s lethal plotting against current and former U.S. government officials, including former President Trump. We are working to investigate and disrupt Iran’s funding and support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups,” Garland said. “And we are working relentlessly to uncover and counter Iran’s efforts to stoke discord, to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, and to influence our elections.” 

The most recent case, announced by the Justice Department Friday, shows the Islamic regime appears to have successfully embedded an agent in a sensitive government agency where he successfully obtained and sent critical information to the regime in Iran. 

The DOJ says Abouzar Rahmati, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, acted as an agent for the Iranian government in the United States from 2017 to 2024. He obtained a job at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as a contractor despite his history working for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. The indictment alleges that Rahmati lied to the U.S. government about his affiliation with the group in order to gain employment with the sensitive contractor. 

According to the indictment, Rahmati first offered his services to Iranian intelligence in August 2017 through a former classmate of his at university. Only four months later he traveled to Iran to meet with intelligence operatives and agreed to spy on the U.S. solar industry. Eventually, he obtained employment with an unnamed company contracting with FAA on the power and electrical architecture of the sensitive National Airspace System (NAS), according to the indictment. 

The Justice Department says Rahmati downloaded sensitive documents from the company about the FAA’s systems and personally delivered them to Iran in April 2022. The documents included those “that would give a person unfamiliar with NAS facility engineering a reasonable understanding of how the NAS power and electrical architecture is configured,” the DOJ press release says. 

After Rahmati returned to the United States, the Justice Department says he gathered further information about solar energy, the FAA, U.S. airports and air traffic control towers and sent it to his brother, a co-conspirator who passed the information on to Iran. 

You can read the indictment below: 

A breach at the FAA is just one part of a recent pattern of more brazen aggression by the Islamic regime in Iran, which has reportedly tried to organize assassination plots of U.S. politicians and hacked campaign documents. 

Shortly before the first attempt on GOP nominee Donald Trump’s life in July, the U.S. authorities received intelligence that Iran was trying to organize a plot to assassinate the former president, causing the Secret Service to ramp up security around him, CNN reported. 

In September, Senator Chuck Grassley released records from a whistleblower showing the U.S. uncovered evidence Iran was involved in planning assassinations targeting Trump, President Joe Biden, and Trump’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, purportedly in retaliation for the U.S. killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp General Qasem Soleimani. 

The FBI detained at least one foreign suspect in a murder-for-hire plot targeting former President Trump, Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani national who border officials allowed to enter the country before he began planning the murder. According to the criminal complaint filed against him by the Justice Department, Merchant attempted to organize a “murder-for-hire” plot to assassinate U.S. politicians or government officials. The DOJ and FBI said Merchant was working “on behalf of others overseas” and pointed the finger at Iran. 

The Justice Department says Merchant tried to hire an individual for an assassination plot shortly after he entered the country in April and that individual become a confidential informant for law enforcement after reporting the contact, Just the News previously reported. 

Merchant reportedly asked the informant about various methods to carry out an assassination attempt. He also told the confidential source that the planned assassination would occur after he left the United States and that he would communicate with the individual to relay instructions. However, law enforcement intercepted Merchant before he left the country. 

In August, the Trump campaign reported that it was notified by Microsoft that Iran had hacked one of its campaign websites. The Iranian operatives allegedly stole internal campaign communications and forwarded them to journalists and individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign before Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, according to Politico. 

At the time, Google confirmed that President Joe Biden’s campaign was also targeted by Iranian hackers, though it appears the attempted breach was not successful in that case. Google also said that is was continuing to observe unsuccessful attempts from the Iranian group to access personal accounts associated with Biden, Harris, and Trump. 

Multiple Iranians were subsequently indicted by the Justice Department for the summer hack of the Trump campaign with Garland promising continued vigilance. "We will use every tool we have to counter and disrupt the efforts of Iran as well as Russia and China to exploit our democratic system of government," Garland said in a press conference.

The DOJ said that aside from targeting Trump, "The operation targeted the email accounts of current and former American public officials, journalists, and most recently, individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns."

Last year, a senior Biden Defense Department official was linked to an Iranian-backed project designed to advance its positions and improve its public image across the world, Just the News reported. 

The official, Ariane Tabatabai currently serves as the chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. She still has security clearance, according to The New York Post. She was previously a senior policy advisor to the Department of Defense and a senior advisor to the Department of State, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The outlet Semafor tied Tabatabai to the Iranian Experts Initiative (IEI), which is backed by Tehran. The outlet obtained a communications between IEI participants and the Iranian government. One March 2014 email shows Iranian diplomat Saeed Khatibzadeh confirmed meetings with Tabatabai and another academic, saying that “[w]e three agreed to be the core group of the IEI.”

Critics of the IEI describe it as "a covert operation initiated by Iran’s foreign ministry in 2014", and that the IEI was "meticulously planned to strategically position Iranian analysts within Western think tanks, subtly advancing Iran's diplomatic objectives.”

In 2021, Tabatabai served on Special Envoy to Iran Robert Malley's team for Iranian nuclear negotiations. Malley is himself under investigation for for potentially mishandling classified information that was seized by a foreign actor. 

Critics say the Biden administration’s own policies are to blame to Iran’s increasing boldness. 

For example, critics have flagged the administration’s sanctions relief policy that freed up an estimated $70 billion in funding for the Islamic theocracy since it took office. The cash provides extra breathing room for the Islamic regime, which has coincided with its proxies' continued strikes on U.S. bases and support for terror groups in their fight against Israel, Just the News previously reported.