NEW YORK — A Pakistani entrepreneur was found guilty on Friday for attempting to hire assassins to eliminate a U.S. politician, in a case that spotlighted alleged Iran-supported activities on American territory.
Amidst ongoing tensions in the Middle East involving Iran, Asif Merchant admitted in a U.S. courtroom that he had plotted an assassination during the 2024 presidential election campaign. The plan was thwarted by U.S. authorities before it could be executed.
A jury in Brooklyn convicted Merchant on charges related to terrorism and murder-for-hire.
Merchant’s intentions were revealed when he demonstrated his plan to an acquaintance using objects on a napkin to simulate a shooting at a political rally. This acquaintance then introduced Merchant to two individuals he believed to be hit men, who were, in fact, undercover FBI agents recording the interaction.
During a meeting in a parked car in Manhattan, Merchant expressed his need for services that might involve assassinating “some political person” and handed over $5,000 in cash to the agents.
In a striking testimony at a federal court in New York, Merchant claimed he was acting under the guidance of a contact within Iran’s influential paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Although his handler did not specify a particular target, names such as then-candidate Donald Trump, then-President Joe Biden, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley were mentioned during their discussions.
The Iranian government has denied trying to kill U.S. officials.
Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses. He has two families, in Pakistan and Iran, and he sometimes visited the U.S. for his garment business.
Merchant testified that he met a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative about three years ago. The contact gave him countersurveillance training and assignments including the assassination scheme, Merchant said.
He maintained that he had to do his handler’s bidding to protect loved ones in Iran. The defendant said he reluctantly went through the motions but thought he’d be arrested and explain his situation to authorities before anyone was killed.
“I was going along with it,” he said, speaking in Urdu through a court interpreter.
Prosecutors emphasized that Merchant admitted taking steps to enact the plan on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard, which the U.S. considers a foreign terrorist organization, and he didn’t proactively go to authorities.
Instead, he was packing for a flight to Pakistan when he was arrested on July 12, 2024, a day before an unrelated attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials said it appeared the Butler gunman acted alone but that they had been tracking a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, a claim that the Islamic Republic called “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
When Merchant subsequently spoke to FBI agents to explore the possibility of a cooperation agreement, he didn’t say he had acted out of fear for his family.
Prosecutors argued that he didn’t back up a defense of acting under duress. Merchant sought to persuade jurors he simply didn’t think the agents would believe him because they seemed to “think that I am some type of super-spy,” which he said he was “absolutely not.”
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