An Iraqi national trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps plotted to assassinate Ivanka Trump, the Jewish daughter of US President Donald Trump, in retaliation for the 2020 US killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, the New York Post reported Friday.

The suspect was identified as Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, a militia commander in Iraq’s Kata’ib Hezbollah and an IRGC operative who is also accused of carrying out a string of recent attacks on Jewish targets in Europe and North America. Al-Saadi was arrested in Turkey on May 15 and extradited to the United States, where he was charged by the US Justice Department with six counts of terrorism-related offenses tied to nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the US.

According to the Post, which cited sources familiar with the investigation, Al-Saadi made a formal “pledge” to kill Ivanka Trump and was found in possession of blueprints of her home in Florida. He had also posted on his X account a map of the area in Florida where Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, reside, accompanied by an Arabic-language message that translated to: “I say to the Americans look at this picture and know that neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you.”

Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché at the Iraqi embassy in Washington who now serves as president of the Future Foundation, told the Post that Al-Saadi spoke openly of avenging Soleimani after the general’s death. “After Qasem was killed, he went around telling people, ‘We need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house,'” Qanbar said. “We heard that he had a plan of Ivanka’s house in Florida.”

Soleimani, the longtime commander of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad’s international airport in January 2020, in an operation ordered by Trump during his first term. According to Qanbar, Al-Saadi was raised in Baghdad primarily by his Iraqi mother before being sent to Tehran for training with the IRGC, where he came to view Soleimani as a personal mentor. A federal criminal complaint includes a photograph from Al-Saadi’s Snapchat account showing him with Soleimani.

Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, is currently serving as one of the administration’s key negotiators in the ongoing diplomatic track between the United States and Iran, lending the alleged plot added geopolitical weight as Washington and Tehran continue to work toward an end to the Israel-Iran war.

The Justice Department said court filings show Al-Saadi was involved in bombings, stabbings, arson, and plots against shuls and US-linked facilities. Among the attacks attributed to him are the firebombing of a Bank of New York Mellon office in Amsterdam in March, a shooting at the US consulate building in Toronto in March, and the stabbing of two Jewish men in the Golders Green neighborhood of north London in April. He is also accused of involvement in the bombing of a shul in Liège, Belgium, and a series of arson attacks across the continent. Researcher and former hostage Elizabeth Tsurkov said Al-Saadi maintained close connections to Soleimani and later to his successor, Esmail Qaani.

Federal investigators allege that Al-Saadi used an Iraqi service passport and a travel agency as cover to move between countries and coordinate with terror cells, while frequently posting on social media in a manner that ultimately aided in his identification. He is being held in solitary confinement in federal custody in New York.

The alleged plot is the latest in a series of Iranian retaliatory schemes targeting senior US officials uncovered since Soleimani’s killing. Pakistani national Asif Raza Merchant was charged in September 2024 with seeking to hire a hitman to assassinate unidentified US politicians and testified in his trial that he was pressured by the IRGC.

The IRGC has been linked to multiple plots against former Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)