Iran has formally rejected claims by anonymous US intelligence sources in US media this week that the Islamic Republic is supposedly plotting to kill Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Prolific Iranian-American political observer Dr. Mohammad Marandi tells Sputnik why the claims make no sense, and what they are designed to conceal.
Iran considers former president Donald Trump a “criminal” who “must be prosecuted and punished” for the January 2020 assassination of IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, but “has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice,” the Iranian mission to the United Nations has told Sputnik.
The allegations made in US media this week that Tehran was plotting to kill Trump using extrajudicial means are “unsubstantiated and malicious,” the mission added, echoing comments made by other Iranian officials that the allegations carry no substance whatsoever.
Trump’s allies and surrogates, including his son Donald Trump Jr, have nevertheless already sought to add credence to the legacy media’s story.
“I think it’s sort of a great endorsement. When people like [the Iranians] want to take you out, that probably means it’s good for America, bad for Iran. That may be the greatest political endorsement ever. But when that happens, their capabilities are much more than a kid with a rifle,” Trump Jr. said, referring to Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old would-be Trump assassin gunned down by the US Secret Service on Saturday after firing multiple rounds from an AR-15-style assault rifle during an outdoor Trump rally in rural Pennsylvania.
The anonymous intelligence and government sources speaking to CNN and Politico separated the Iran plot claims from Saturday’s violence, which left Trump with an injury to his right ear, and a 50-year-old volunteer firefighter dead, saying they were not connected, and claiming that Trump’s protection had actually already been stepped up in part thanks to the Iran plot allegations.
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“We know that US intelligence always lies,” veteran Tehran-based Iranian-American academic and international affairs observer Dr. Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik, commenting on the Iran-Trump plot story.
“They are the ones who claimed that Saddam Hussein was making chemical weapons and developing nuclear weapons and had links with al-Qaeda. They also made false allegations against the government of Libya before destroying the country. The United States has a history of such false claims made by their so-called intelligence community. So we shouldn’t really take them seriously,” Marandi emphasized.
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“The [attempted] assassination of Trump was obviously either an inside job carried out by the Biden regime, or elements within the Biden regime, or the US Secret Service was extremely incompetent because the shooter was very close and it should not have happened,” Marandi said. “If this was Russia or Iran or any other country with a competent government, there would have been no chance for such a thing to happen,” he added, emphasizing that the attempt to “scapegoat” Iran is laughable and that the claims “[don’t] add up.”
The observer doesn’t rule out that the US intelligence community may be “afraid” that people will blame the Biden administration directly, leading to the further polarization of tensions in the United States which are already “extraordinarily high.”
“And so they’re attempting to distract or deflect attention away from themselves,” Mirandi explained. “Just like when Trump won in 2016, the political regime in the United States, the deep state – needed a scapegoat, so they said that Russia brought Trump to power. This is the same thing.”
A Reuters-Ipsos poll taken in the wake of Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life and published Tuesday showed that four in five Americans fear that their country is “spiraling” out of control, and believe that “acts of violence” are “throwing this country into chaos” amid what is already a tense election year.
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Tying Trump’s Hands?
Professor Mirandi doesn’t rule out that the Iran-Trump assassination plot claims may also be meant to lock Trump into a poor relationship with Tehran directly from the get-go if he wins the election in November.
The United States had a notoriously poor relationship with Iran throughout Trump’s first term in office, with Washington withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement on Israel’s advice, ramping up regional tensions by moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and exchanging in a series of high-profile security confrontations culminating in the January 2020 drone strike assassination of Qasem Soleimani – provoking Iranian ballistic missile strikes on US bases in Iraq that left over 100 soldiers with traumatic brain injuries.
“The United States under Biden failed to change its policy toward Iran…We had negotiations to revive the nuclear deal with better protection, and we almost achieved a deal two years ago…[but] the United States under Biden failed to take the final step,” Mirandi said.
“So Biden failed. Trump, regardless of the fact that we despise him in Iran because he murdered the general who led the regional fight against ISIS* and al-Qaeda*, a group which the United States helped create, but Trump needs to de-escalate. The United States is overstretched with China, with Ukraine, with Iran – the empire is collapsing. So the United States needs to pull back, and perhaps Trump’s enemies want to prevent him from being able to do so…That could be a motive in itself,” the observer emphasized.
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In an interview with Bloomberg published on Tuesday, Trump suggested that the US needs to “be smart” in its foreign policy, including via adversaries, suggesting thanks to Joe Biden’s “stupid” policies, “China has aligned with Russia, Iran and North Korea” into an anti-US “marriage” and become self-sufficient.
“So what we’re doing with sanctions is we’re forcing everyone away from us. So I don’t love sanctions. I found them very useful with Iran, but I didn’t even need sanctions with Iran so much,” Trump said.
Boasting about ending the Iran nuclear agreement, which he dubbed the “stupidest deal,” Trump suggested that the “problem” has been that Biden “has done nothing with it” to replace it by a new agreement.
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By Ilya Tsukanov
Published by Sputnik Globe
Republished by The 21st Century
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 21cir.com