A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Pakistani national Asif Merchant on Friday for his role in a 2024 plot to kill President Donald Trump and other senior U.S. political figures at the direction of Iranian authorities, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
The DOJ said Merchant was convicted of murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries. Both charges are federal felonies.
Federal prosecutors said the targets also included then-President Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, who ran against Trump that year for the Republican presidential nomination. Law enforcement thwarted the plan before any attack occurred, the DOJ said. The trial in Brooklyn started last week. Reuters reported the jury reached its verdict on Friday.
The DOJ said Merchant was accused of trying to recruit people inside the United States to carry out the plot, which Reuters described as retaliation for Washington's killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, during Trump's first term.
Reuters reports that the scheme unraveled in April 2024 when a person Merchant contacted to help with the plot reported his activities to authorities and became a confidential informant, the DOJ said. Merchant was arrested and pleaded not guilty that same year.
At trial, Reuters reported, Merchant admitted joining the plot with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps but testified he did so unwillingly, claiming he wanted to protect his family in Tehran. Merchant also said he was never ordered to kill a specific person, and that his Iranian handler named three people during conversations in the Iranian capital.
That defense did not survive contact with the jury. The conviction required the panel to find beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning to a near certainty, that Merchant committed both offenses. They did.
The DOJ said the plot was "directed by Iranian authorities." The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran's elite paramilitary and intelligence apparatus, was specifically identified by Reuters as the organization Merchant admitted working with.
Reuters reported that Tehran has denied accusations that it targeted Trump or other U.S. officials. No Iranian official was quoted, and no specific denial was cited.
That denial now sits against a federal conviction in a U.S. courtroom. A jury weighed the evidence, heard Merchant's own admission that he joined the IRGC plot, and returned a guilty verdict in a trial that lasted roughly a week.
Reuters noted the trial started days before Trump ordered an assault on Iran, carried out with Israel, that Reuters described as having expanded into the region's biggest war in years. Iran's U.N. ambassador claimed U.S. and Israeli attacks since Saturday have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands.
The U.S. military said six American service members were killed in a strike on a facility in Kuwait. Israeli tallies, as reported by Reuters, showed at least 10 civilians killed across Israel.
The conviction lands against that backdrop. An Iranian regime that the DOJ says directed an assassination plot against a sitting president and two other prominent Americans is now at war with the United States and Israel. Reuters reported that many top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been killed.
Authorities have not publicly announced a sentencing date for Merchant. The court name, presiding judge, and case docket number have not been disclosed in public reporting.
Those details will matter as the case moves to its sentencing phase, where the court will determine the penalty for two federal felony convictions tied directly to a foreign government's alleged campaign to assassinate American leaders on American soil.
The Merchant case is a concrete, courtroom-proven example of what Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism looks like when it reaches U.S. shores. A man recruited by the IRGC to arrange the killings of a president, a former president, and a presidential candidate was stopped not by diplomacy or deterrence, but by a single contact who picked up the phone and called law enforcement. That is how close it got.
