(Ken Silva, Headline USA) On March 4, Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that the leader of an Iranian unit that attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump has been “hunted down and killed.”
However, that may not be the case. The New York Times reported Friday that the purported leader—Rahman Mokadam, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ special operations division—may still be alive.
American officials are divided on whether Mr. Makdam is dead. Some say Mr. Hegseth is correct — that the man was killed in the strike. Other people briefed on the intelligence said his death has not been confirmed by either the United States or Israel,” the Times reported Friday.
The Times added that Hegseth may have also overstated Makdam’s role in the supposed Trump assassination plots.
“Makdam has overseen that unit as part of his broader responsibilities, and has been involved in other repressive acts in Iran from his job inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps special operations division. But officials said there was not intelligence placing him in a direct role of plotting to kill Mr. Trump,” the newspaper said.
“Another I.R.G.C. official, whom officials interviewed for this article would not identify, is believed to be the leader of the external assassinations unit, including the plot to kill Mr. Trump. That official is believed to be alive.”
Officials have yet to provide any evidence of a credible Iranian assassination threat against Trump. The Times reported Friday that Israeli intelligence provided the initial warnings that Iran was trying to kill him.
NYT corroborated today Tucker's reporting that the Iranian assassination conspiracy theories originated from Israel. https://t.co/z9J3Bz8EsQ pic.twitter.com/KHozUkTmca
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) March 13, 2026
There were two assassination attempts against Trump in 2024. One occurred on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, when 20-year-old Thomas Crooks allegedly shot him in the ear from a rooftop during a campaign rally. The other occurred about two months later at Trump’s Palm Beach golf course, where North Carolina man Ryan Routh was spotted by Secret Service hiding in the bushes with an SKS-style rifle a mere few hundred yards away from Trump.
There’s no evidence that either attempt was sponsored by Iran.
The FBI did arrest a Pakistani national named Asif Merchant on July 12, 2024—the day before Trump was shot—for murder-for-hire in an alleged plot to assassinate U.S. officials, including possibly Trump.
However, Merchant’s actions can hardly be called an assassination attempt. Rather, the available evidence suggests that Merchant was the target of a highly controlled FBI sting operation, and that he never posed a threat to Trump.
Indeed, the U.S. was monitoring Merchant before he even entered the U.S. in April 2024, and officials let him into the country to track him and see where he’d go.
Moreover, an FBI informant drove Merchant around while he was here, and introduced him to two undercover agents posing as “hitmen.” Merchant allegedly paid those two agents $5,000 as a downpayment for his plot—which also included staging a protest and stealing documents—and he was arrested as he was attempting to leave the country.
Merchant’s trial is currently underway and is expected to last through mid-March.
The FBI did accuse one other man of being involved in an Iranian plot against Trump in a criminal complaint filed in November 2024. In that case, there’s arguably even less evidence of a credible threat to Trump.
Indeed, the defendants in that case—Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, also known as Pop, 49, of Brooklyn, New York; and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, New York—were not accused of conspiring to kill any politicians, let alone Trump. Rather, they were charged with plotting to kill a U.S. journalist of Iranian origin.
While Shakeri is one of the defendants, the government’s criminal complaint shows that he appears to have been snitching to the FBI in recent months. According to the charging papers, Shakeri participated in phone interviews with the FBI from Iran on September 30, October 8, October 17, October 28 and November 7—ostensibly trading information in exchange for a sentence reduction for an unidentified individual.
In one of those interviews, Shakeri—who was deported from the United States in 2008 after serving fourteen years in prison for robbery—told the FBI that an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps official was pushing him to assassinate Trump.
Shakeri further told the FBI that the IRGC official told him on October 7 that he had to provide a plan to kill Trump within seven days. Shakeri said he was unable to do so, and so Iran decided to pause its plans to kill Trump until after the election—which would have made it easier to kill him if he lost.
The FBI admitted in the charging papers that Shakeri is a liar, but said his claims about Trump “appear to be truthful.” Nevertheless, when the Justice Department secured indictments in the case a month after the criminal complaint was filed, there was no mention of the allegation against Trump.
Loadholt and Rivera both pled guilty to conspiring against the journalist, while Shakeri remains at-large in Iran.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
