The Iranian government is comparing an assassination attempt opposed to the U. S. ambassador to South Africa, according to U. S. intelligence reports, according to a U. S. government official familiar with the issue and an official who saw the intelligence.
News of the plot comes as Iran continues to seek retaliatory tactics against President Donald Trump’s resolve to kill a tough Iranian general this year, officials said. If implemented, it can particularly increase already severe tensions between the United States. and Iran and create great pressure on Trump to retaliate, in the midst of a tense election season.
U. S. officials have been aware of a general risk that has opposed Ambassador Lana Marks since the spring, authorities said, but risk intelligence for the ambassador has been more accurate in recent weeks. said the official.
But attacking Marks is one of many characteristics that U. S. officials the Iranian regime is contemplating taking since the general, Qassem Soleimani, was killed through an attack with an American drone in January. At the time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States had killed Soleimani to repair the Iran-opposing deterrence.
An intelligence network board known as “Duty to Warn” requires US spy agencies to be able to do so. But it’s not the first time Notify a potential victim if the data indicates that their life would possibly be in danger; In the case of U. S. government officials, the US government is not a member of the U. S. government. Credible threats would be included in briefings and security planning. The marks raised awareness of the threat, the US government official said. Available to senior U. S. government policy and security officials. As well as for some legislators and their staff.
Marks, 66, swore as U. S. ambassador last October. He has known Trump for more than two decades and is a member of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Trump’s critics have ridiculed her as a “bag designer,” but her supporters respond that she is a successful businesswoman (her bags of the same name charge up to $40,000) with many foreign relationships. A non-public friend of Princess Diana, who was also born in South Africa and speaks some of the country’s main languages, she added. Afrikaans and Xhosa.
The intelligence network is not sure why the Iranians would target Marks, who has little or no known link to Iran. It is imaginable that the Iranians have considered their long friendship with Trump, the U. S. government official said.
The Iranian government also operates clandestine networks in South Africa, officials noted, and has been operating there for decades. In 2015, Al Jazeera and The Guardian reported leaks of intelligence documents detailing a vast secret network of Iranian agents in South Africa. It will also be a less difficult target than U. S. diplomats in other parts of the world, such as Western Europe, where the United States has a more powerful relationship with local law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Iran’s Islamist leaders have a history of carrying out murders beyond their country’s borders, as well as taking hostages, since they took strength after a popular uprising in the late 1970s. In recent decades, Iran has sometimes avoided directly attacking American diplomats. although Iran-backed militias have long attacked diplomatic facilities and the U. S. workers’ corps in Iraq.
Trump alleged after Soleimani’s murder that the Iranian general had planned attacks on U. S. diplomatic missions, even though U. S. officials later questioned his claims. “They were looking to blow up our embassy,” Trump said in January, referring to america’s large and heavily fortified. Diplomatic complex in Iraq. Later, in an interview with Fox News, he said, “I can reveal that I think it was four embassies. “
Days after Soleimani’s death, Iran introduced a ballistic missile salvo at an army base in Iraq that housed U. S. forces, causing head injuries to dozens of U. S. soldiers. Trump refused to retaliate and said that “Iran is withdrawing, which is a smart thing for everyone involved and something very smart for the world. ” — announced new sanctions opposed to the Iranian regime and warned him that he opposed additional retaliatory measures.
However, some analysts said at the time that Iran would likely seek other tactics to avenge Soleimani’s death. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of the US Central Command, was the most level-headed on the list of previous Iranian targets this year, according to media reports. McKenzie said last month that he expected a new “response” from Iran to the continued US presence in Iraq.
“I don’t know what the nature of that answer will be, but in fact we’ll be in a position to do it, if it happens,” he said. On Wednesday, McKenzie showed his goal of decreasing the presence of U. S. troops in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,000 until the end of September.
At an online forum in August, McKenzie said Iran was “our central problem” in the region, and claimed that the danger of Iranian agents in Iraq had confused U. S. efforts opposed to IS, the radical Sunni terrorist organization and movement. “The risk opposed, our shia militant team forces has led us to allocate resources that we would otherwise use opposed to ISIS to protect us and this has reduced our ability to pictures well opposed to them,” he said.
The White House-based National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment, neither an Iranian official of Iran’s project to the United Nations nor an official of the South African embassy in Washington State Department spokespersons, the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
The United States and Iran have been staunch enemies for decades, infrequently confronting each other, and cautiously participating in international relations with others, and even more waging a dark war for force and influence throughout the Middle East. have repeatedly veered towards a confrontation between the army.
Last summer, the United States accused Iran and its agents of a series of oil tanker explosions. Iran destroyed a U. S. drone and then the United States controlled it to shoot down an Iranian drone.
Trump admitted that after Iran shot down the U. S. drone, he nearly legalized a direct attack on Iranian soil, but kept his word after learning that another 150 people could die, a figure he said was disproportionate.
The dispute between countries deepened in the following months, particularly in Iraq, where the United States and the United States have long engaged in a war for powers. In December, a U. S. contractor died in Iraq after an attack through an Iran-allied defense force. The United States responded through bombing sites held through the group, killing about two dozen of its fighters. Soon after, protesters suspected of being related to the defense forces violated parts of the U. S. embassy compound in Baghdad.
Then, in early January, the United States organized an airstrike that killed Soleimani on his way to Baghdad. This was a primary escalation given Soleimani’s importance in Iran, U. S. officials described it as a defensive measure.
Soleimani led the Quds Force, a unit of iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that oversees much of the country’s army’s activities outside its borders. The Americans blamed him for the deaths of many U. S. troops in the region.
Iran has promised retaliation. His first major gesture was the January 8 missile attack on the Assad army base in Iraq, but at about the same time, an Iranian missile shot down a civilian plane, killing 176 other people and causing Iran’s internal fury at the regime’s incompetence and conversion of explanations of the incident, as well as condemnation abroad.
Iran and South Africa have cooperated on several fronts in recent decades, adding at the United Nations, where South Africa has infrequently defended Irán. Se believes South Africa’s uranium deposits have been of primary interest to Iran as it intensified its nuclear program. , which Tehran has insisted is intended for nonviolent power purposes and not for a bomb. The couple also have a relationship with the army, having signed fundamental defense pacts.
Strange plots related to Iran have already been uncovered.
Nearly a decade ago, the United States arrested and nevertheless convicted an Iranian-American who allegedly tried to rent Mexican drug cartel killers to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States while dining at Café Milano, an elegant place to eat in Washington. He frequented the city’s rich and hard. The United States has accused Soleimani of overseeing the plot.