Why does Iran keep sending amateurs to conduct assassinations in the U.S.?

The murder-for-hire charge announced this week against a Pakistani national linked in court papers to Iran marked the fourth alleged Iranian assassination plot inside the United States over the past three years thwarted by the FBI, in what the attorney general called a “persistent” and “brazen” campaign by Iran to punish its enemies on American soil.

Among the questions raised by that remarkable, and remarkably unsuccessful, purported campaign: Why do the Iranians keep sending amateurs who seemingly get caught so easily? And what is the U.S. doing to deter this alleged rogue behavior by Iran?

Law enforcement officials and experts who study the Iranian regime say it’s more difficult than most people realize for Iran to carry out a covert operation inside the U.S. Iran has no embassy here to host intelligence officers, and the U.S. intelligence and border protection agencies have been fairly successful at keeping out Iranians with ties to that country’s military and spy services.

“They can’t get in here,” said Kenneth Katzman, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center who spent decades following Iran for the Congressional Research Service. “They are working with people who are able to gain access here, which means they have to work with undesirable people. Iranian agents don’t get in here that easily.”

As for recruiting agents inside the U.S., “not many people here support that regime,” Katzman said. “There’s not a lot of takers for what Iran is offering. So they’ve got to work with what they can recruit.”

But Norm Roule, who studied Iran for decades as a CIA analyst, says that view misses the point: Even when the plots fail, Iran derives a benefit.

“Any assessment that Iran is assigning lethal operations to a ‘B team’ misses the utility of nonofficial actors,” said Roule, currently affiliated with United Against Nuclear Iran. “Nonofficial operatives with no history of engagement with Iran are more difficult to identify.”

And even unsuccessful operations have value, said Roule. Failed operations that aren’t punished, he said, prove to the world that Iran’s security services “can conduct lethal operations worldwide against officials, dissidents or journalists without paying any price.”

Given this scenario, said Roule, “the use of nonofficial actors makes better sense than an official actor, in that compromise of the latter could risk military action.”

Court papers say Asif Merchant of Pakistan, who was charged this week with a murder plot that officials say may have targeted former President Donald Trump, discussed the operation almost as soon as he touched down in Texas with someone who quickly reported him to police. The FBI began a sting operation, dangling assassins for hire who were actually undercover agents. He was arrested in July when he tried to leave the country. Officials say they see no connection between that plot and the shooting of Trump in Pennsylvania by a local resident who had researched mass shootings and political assassinations.

Two years ago, a similar scenario unfolded when a man with alleged ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard tried to hire people to kill John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser. Unbeknownst to the would-be assassin, he was dealing with an FBI informant who was reporting the plot as it unfolded, according to court papers.

U.S. officials say those plots were designed to take revenge for the 2020 targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, who was said to have been responsible for the deaths of many Americans.

In 2011, a scheme to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington fell apart thanks to a confidential Drug Enforcement Administration informant. The Iranian-born U.S. citizen recruited to carry out the plot, who planned to blow up a popular Washington, D.C., restaurant, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2013 to 25 years in federal prison.

Two other alleged plots — both of which targeted an Iranian dissident in New York — appeared to have come closer to fruition.

In 2021, the Justice Department charged four alleged Iranian intelligence operatives with trying to kidnap Masih Alinejad. And last year federal prosecutors charged three members of an Eastern European criminal organization with trying to kill her. Alinejad survived because she failed to answer her door in Brooklyn, New York, when a man with an assault rifle rang the bell, according to court papers. He left, ran a stop sign and was arrested, leading to the plot’s unraveling.

Iran has denied plotting any assassinations in the U.S.

In an exclusive interview last week with NBC News, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Iranians “are brazen about this and they are persistent about this. … I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Iranian plotting.”

In announcing each of these cases, Justice Department and FBI officials pointed the finger at Iran, blasted its behavior and vowed to hold conspirators accountable.

“An attempted assassination of a former U.S. government official on U.S. soil is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” then-Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D’Antuono of the FBI’s Washington field office said when the Bolton plot was revealed.

But the FBI doesn’t make foreign policy, and the Biden administration has been less outspoken. Critics, including Roule and Bolton, say the administration has failed to make Iran think twice about trying to kill former U.S. officials and dissidents on American soil.

Bolton, the target of the 2021 plot, praised the FBI as having done a great job thwarting the Iranians but faulted the Biden administration for not making clear in public statements that there will be a cost to Iran for its behavior.

“They keep saying it’s a law enforcement matter. It’s not a law enforcement matter,” he said. “They are committing acts of war against the United States. It’s not criminal activity, it’s a regime-directed activity — it’s a foreign government.”

The absence of a military threat from the U.S., said Roule, “and handling Iranian operations as a legal issue likely encouraged Tehran to authorize lethal operations against [the U.S.]. Similar operations take place in Europe and elsewhere due to a lack of a collective response against Iran. We should expect such operations to continue.”

A spokesman for the National Security Council pointed out that after the plot against Bolton was exposed, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement, “Should Iran attack any of our citizens, to include those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences. We will continue to bring to bear the full resources of the U.S. government to protect Americans.”

NSC spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement: “As we have said many times, we take these threats extremely seriously, and we strongly condemn any actions from Iran and any other country that threatens American citizens. … The Biden-Harris administration has imposed over 700 sanctions on Iran, and as long as they continue to threaten Americans and our allies and partners, we won’t hesitate to take further action to hold them accountable.”

But a review of the record shows the administration has not consistently condemned what it says are Iranian assassination plots, or publicly warned Iran to stop.

Asked whether she condemned the most recent plot, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to do so.

“We have said many times that we have been tracking Iranian threats against former politicians,” she said this week. “We’ve been very clear about that these threats arise from Iran’s desire to seek revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani. … We consider [this a] national and homeland security matter of the highest priority, the highest priority, [and] we have repeatedly met at the highest levels of our government to develop and implement a comprehensive response to these threats.”

A few weeks ago, when NBC News and other outlets reported that the U.S. had received intelligence about an Iranian threat to Trump’s life, the White House issued a written statement that did not condemn the plot.

“We have repeatedly and consistently briefed the public and Congress on the existence of these threats. We have repeatedly met at the highest levels of our government to develop and implement a comprehensive response to these threats. As part of that comprehensive response, we have invested extraordinary resources in developing additional information about these threats, disrupting individuals involved in these threats, enhancing the protective arrangements of potential targets of these threats, engaging with foreign partners, and directly warning Iran. We are also consistently in touch with the agencies overseeing the security details of these former officials to share evolving threat information on a timely basis and to reinforce President Biden’s directive that they receive every resource, capability, and protective measure required to address those evolving threats.”

By contrast, when U.S. officials concluded the Indian government was behind the killing of a Sikh activist last year in Canada, White House spokesman John Kirby said the administration was “deeply concerned” about the matter.

And when the U.S. concluded that an Indian government official was behind a plot to carry out a similar killing in the U.S., the White House engaged “in direct conversations with the Indian government at the highest levels to express our concern,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said.

Republicans complain that the Biden administration’s response to Iran’s alleged plots has been inexplicably weak. Neither President Joe Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris has commented on the alleged Iranian assassination plots.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris must make clear that any attempt by Iran to murder former President Trump or members of his administration is an act of war,” House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner said in a statement.