Tag Archives: Brian Hook

Public Alert: FBI hunts for Iranian assassin targeting Trump-era officials

Iranian-Assassin

Important Takeaways:

  • The U.S. government is intensifying a manhunt for an Iranian intelligence operative who the Federal Bureau of Investigation believes has been plotting to assassinate current and former American officials, including one-time Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
  • The FBI’s Miami field office on Friday issued a public alert seeking information on Majid Dastjani Farahani, a suspected member of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, who the Bureau alleged has been recruiting “individuals for operations in the U.S., to include lethal targeting of current/former USG officials.”
  • The Iranian government has repeatedly vowed over the past four years to avenge the 2020 death of Major General Qasem Soleimani – a commander of Iran’s elite Qods Force – whom the Trump administration assassinated in Baghdad using a drone strike on his convoy.
  • The DoJ indicted members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) in 2022 for allegedly plotting to murder Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton
  • U.S. officials told Semafor they believe Pompeo and Trump’s special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, are also on Tehran’s hit list. The U.S. government is currently providing both men with around-the-clock security due to the severity of the threat.

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Continued Iranian threats against Mike Pompeo and Brian Hook after killing of Soleimani

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Iran again threatens to assassinate Pompeo: ‘Live in fear’
  • Iran is threatening a possible assassination attempt on former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, with high-profile Twitter accounts posting inflammatory messages against him.
  • Pompeo, now a Fox News contributor, has been highly critical of Iran both while serving in the Trump administration and after. He was in office when U.S. forces killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, whose daughter is now threatening the former secretary of state.
  • Trump administration Iran envoy Brian Hook is also facing a “serious and credible” threat from Iran, according to a State Department report to Congress
  • The State Department told the outlet that attempts on the lives of current or former American officials would be met with “severe consequences.”

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Anthony Blinken confirms to congress Iranian efforts to assassinate Mike Pompeo and assistant Brian Hook

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Iran’s attempts to kill Pompeo, current U.S. officials are real and ongoing, Blinken says
  • Iran’s attempts to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are real and ongoing, his successor, Antony Blinken, told Congress
  • All former secretaries of state automatically receive protection from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security for 180 days after leaving office.
  • But Blinken has repeatedly extended that protection for 60-day increments due to “a serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power arising from duties performed by former Secretary Pompeo while employed by the department,” according to the sensitive State Department report to Congress last month.
  • “Make no mistake: the United States of America will protect and defend its citizens,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said at the time.

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U.S. Iran envoy Brian Hook stepping down as key U.N. arms embargo vote looms

By Humeyra Pamuk and Michelle Nichols

(Reuters) – Top U.S. envoy for Iran Brian Hook is leaving his post and Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special representative for Venezuela, will add Iran to his role “following a transition period” with Hook, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.

Hook’s surprise departure comes at a critical time when Washington has been intensely lobbying at the United Nations to extend an arms embargo on Iran and as the U.N. Security Council prepares to hold a vote on the U.S. resolution next week.

“We’re going to continue to make the case for this,” Hook told reporters on Thursday morning, hours before his departure was announced. “We hope that the council can find a way.”

It was not immediately clear when Hook’s tenure would formally end and whether he would see through the vote or not.

Pompeo did not give a reason for Hook’s decision to leave but wrote in a tweet that Hook was moving on to the private sector. He described him as a “trusted adviser and a good friend” who has achieved “historic results” in countering Tehran and secured the release of U.S. citizens detained by Iran.

Hook, 52, was appointed to the top Iran role at the State Department in late 2018 and has been instrumental in Washington’s intensifying pressure campaign on Tehran after President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers.

Opponents criticized Hook and the administration for overly harsh and indiscriminate sanctions, which they said were hurting ordinary Iranians and failing to change the behavior of the Iranian government.

The U.S. bid at the Security Council to extend the arms embargo is a key test that some diplomats say will likely fail as it lacks the necessary support and veto powers Russia and China have already signaled their opposition.

If the United States is unsuccessful in its bid, it has threatened to trigger a return of all U.N. sanctions under a process known as snapback. Some diplomats have suggested Washington will likely start the snapback process, which could take up to 30 days, by the end of August.

Abrams, 72, a Republican foreign policy veteran, was named U.S. special representative for Venezuela in January 2019 and has led a hard-line approach aimed at ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

U.S. officials have said privately that Trump has been frustrated by the failure to remove Maduro, who retains the support of the Venezuelan military, as well from Russia, China, Cuba and Iran.

Abrams has recently been dealing with U.S. concerns about a growing alliance between Iran and Venezuela, both OPEC members under heavy U.S. sanctions. Iran in recent months has sent fuel tankers to gasoline-short Venezuela, drawing U.S. ire.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick; writing by Michelle Nichols; editing by Diane Craft, Dan Grebler and Jonathan Oatis)