Morgan Ortagus: Iranian regime is actively trying to kill Americans
Former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus reacts to reports of bounties by the Iranian regime to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other American officials on 'The Next Revolution.'
JERUSALEM, Israel – The propaganda newspaper Kayhan, the mouthpiece for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, announced in a blaring editorial on its front page that the assassination of President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the cards.
In an editorial on Saturday, the newspaper wrote, "The attack on [Rushdie] shows it is not a difficult job to take similar revenge on Trump and Pompeo and from now on they will feel more in danger for their lives."
On Friday, 24-year-old New Jersey resident Hadi Matar, who showed great sympathy for the Iranian regime on Facebook, was charged with attempted murder in the attack on the famous American British novelist Salman Rushdie in upstate New York.
The fiery anti-Western paper wrote in its editorial, "God has taken his revenge on Rushdie."
BIDEN ADMIN CONTINUES NEGOTIATING WITH IRAN DESPITE PLANS TO KILL HIGH-LEVEL AMERICAN POLITICIANS
Banafsheh Zand, an Iranian American human rights expert, told Fox News Digital, "Hossein Shariatmadari, the so-called editor-in-chief of Kayhan (a reputable media outlet before the Islamic revolution), is the de facto media mouthpiece for Khamenei, his Josef Goebbels. He openly threatened my father, who had been one of the young editors and contributors to pre-revolution Kayhan, and called for his continued torture and punishment while in prison. "
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on March 21, 2022. (Official website of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
She added, "Anything and everything that Kayhan publishes has to pass under this man's nose, and anything that he publishes is a direct order from none other than Khamenei and his office. So if the Biden State Department wants to dismiss this threat, like all the other alarming signs about the Shi'a Mafia's modus operandi, and go ahead with their pie-in-the-sky deal, they will have signed away U.S. security and signaled to Tehran that it's open season on the West."
The Biden administration is desperately trying to secure a nuclear agreement with Iran’s regime. The main elements of the atomic deal are a temporary restriction on Tehran’s capability to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for massive economic sanctions relief in the amount of over $100 billion.
Iran’s threat to assassinate Trump is a repeat of its lethal rhetoric.
Sheina Vojoudi, a spokesperson for the Senate of the National Iranian Congress, told Fox News Digital, "Any threat from the Islamic Republic in Iran must be taken seriously by the U.S. There are Iranians and also the members of the Islamic Republic’s militias in the U.S. who are loyal to the Islamic Republic's ideology and this is where the threat begins.
"In 2020, Esmael Qaani, the commander of the Quds Force for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, threatened Trump in one of his speeches and said that Trump must live secretly like Salman Rushdie."
The news organization VICE reported that Matar, the suspected stabber of Rushdie, had been in contact with "people either directly involved with or adjacent to the Quds Force."
Hadi Matar, 24, listens as his public defense attorney Nathaniel Barone addresses the judge during an arraignment in the Chautauqua County Courthouse in Mayville, New York, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
The U.S. State Department has classified the IRGC and its external militia, the Quds Force, foreign terrorist organizations.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told FoxNews Digital, "The Iranian regime is clearly responsible for the satanic and anti-Islamic attack on the British author Salman Rushdie."
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He continued, "All state-run media, including that associated with the supreme leader, have endorsed the terrorist attack on Rushdie, threatening others and American officials, including President Trump and Secretary Pompeo. Supreme Leader Khamenei and [President Ebrahim] Raisi feel that they can get away with threats and blackmail without any serious consequences. Khamenei hopes that such threats may at least lead to more concessions from the West."
A Belgian court imposed a 20-year sentence on the Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi for planning to blow up a 2018 NCRI conference in France.