Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani has lashed out at the Biden administration’s allegations that an Iranian national planned to assassinate former US President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton.
In an apparent nod to Bolton, Kanaani wrote in a post on his Twitter feed on Friday that “Fabricating stories regarding a politically bankrupt element, a known terrorist and a coup plotter against independent states, is a US deceptive bid to escape from international responsibilities.”
The spokesman added that “such fanfares won't whitewash [the] US regime's image, but makes Iranians and the world more resentful of it”.
The remarks came a few days after Kanaani blamed Washington for “the spinning of these threadbare and baseless myths,” something that he said is “becoming a recurring custom in the American judicial and propaganda system”.
According to him, “continuing their endless accusations” against Tehran and “their failed Iranophobic policy, the American judicial authorities, in a new yarn spinning, have raised accusations without providing valid evidence and necessary documentation.”
Kanaani insisted that “such baseless claims are made with political motives and aims and in fact amount to […] escaping the responsibility of responding to numerous terrorist crimes that the American government has either directly participated in, such as the cowardly assassination of General Martyr Soleimani, or like the terrorist crimes committed by the Zionist regime and terrorist groups like Daesh* with the support of America”.
This followed alleged member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Shahram Poursafi being charged by the US with plotting to kill Bolton.
In an announcement on Wednesday, the US Department of Justic (DoJ) argued that Poursafi, aka Mehdi Rezayi, 45, had "attempted to pay individuals in the United States $300,000 to carry out the murder [of Bolton] in Washington DC or Maryland”.
The DoJ claimed that Poursafi was apparently seeking revenge for the US assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Soleimani was killed in drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020, in an attack that was ordered by then-US President Donald Trump. The killing led to a major escalation of tensions between Tehran and Washington, with Iran responding by launching airstrikes against two Iraqi military bases housing US troops.