Iran on Wednesday described as “malicious and unsubstantiated” the accusations by the US media implicating it in an attempt to kill former US president Donald Trump.
CNN had reported on Tuesday that US authorities received intelligence from a “human source” weeks ago on a plot allegedly being carried out by the Iranian government to assassinate the former president. The information prompted authorities to boost security around Trump, according to the report which was also carried by other news outlets.
CNN stated in the report that the alleged plot was not linked to Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, in which the former president was wounded in the ear and a rally attendant killed.
The US National Security Council raised a security alert as it had been “tracking Iranian threats against former Trump administration officials for years” after vowing to take vengeance for the 2020 killing of Revolutionary Guards commander, Qasem Soleimani in a US drone attack in neighbouring Iraq.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanani said “Iran strongly rejects any involvement in the recent armed attack against Trump.”
He however expressed Iran’s strong desire “to prosecute Trump over his direct role in the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani.”
Soleimani was in charge of the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which oversees Iranian military operations across the Middle East.
As president, Trump had approved his killing which was executed in a drone strike just outside Baghdad airport.
Source: Arab News