Iran’s president said the country has never plotted to kill President-elect Donald Trump in a new interview on Tuesday, just months after the U.S. Department of Justice charged an Iranian man with an alleged “murder-for-hire” scheme.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke with NBC News just over a week before Trump’s inauguration for a second term. His first featured a frosty and combative relationship with Tehran that included the end of the Iran nuclear deal and the assassination of a key military figure, Maj. General Qassim Suleimani.
“This is another one of those schemes that Israel and other countries are designing to promote Iranophobia,” Pezeshkian told host Lester Holt via an interpreter. “Iran has never attempted to, nor does it plan to assassinate anyone. At least as far as I know.”
“You’re saying there was never an Iranian plot to kill Donald Trump?” Holt went on.
“None whatsoever,” Pezeshkian replied.
Iran has long meddled in U.S. affairs and denied doing so. Iranian operatives were charged with hacking the Trump campaign in September.
Last November, Justice Department officials revealed what it called a “brazen” attempt to target U.S. citizens, including Trump, and others who criticized Iran. A criminal complaint alleged a man was ordered to carry out the plan by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran. The suspect told investigators he was given seven days to come up with a plan to surveil and then kill Trump, who was the Republican presidential candidate at the time.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a designated foreign terrorist organization — has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil, and that simply won’t be tolerated,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the time. “Thanks to the hard work of the FBI, their deadly schemes were disrupted.”
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Iran has vehemently denied those claims.
Pezeshkian added Tuesday that Iran planned to have an open diplomatic relationship with the incoming Trump administration. But he said the country remained concerned about agreeing to commitments that would then be voided by an unpredictable White House.
“We upheld all the commitments that we had to commit to,” he said of the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump canceled in 2018. “But unfortunately it was the other party that did not live up to its promises and obligations.”