NYP: IRGC-linked terrorist plotted to assassinate Ivanka Trump

A man allegedly trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and linked to Iraqi militant networks was targeted in an assassination plot against Ivanka Trump, according to reports and US federal court documents cited by The New York Post.

The suspect, identified as Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, was recently arrested in Türkiye on May 15 and extradited to the United States, where he faces charges related to 18 alleged attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and North America.

According to sources cited in the report, Al-Saadi allegedly “made a ‘pledge’ to kill Ivanka and even had a blueprint of her Florida home,” in what authorities say was part of a broader retaliation campaign for the 2020 US killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.

“After Qasem was killed, he [Al-Saadi] went around telling people ‘we need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house,'” said Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché in the Iraqi embassy in Washington. “We heard that he had a plan of Ivanka’s house in Florida,” Qanbar added.

A second source also confirmed the alleged plot.

Investigators say Al-Saadi posted an image on X showing a map of a Florida area where Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner own a residence, alongside an Arabic message interpreted as a threat.

"I say to the Americans look at this picture and know that neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you. We are currently in the stage of surveillance and analysis. I told you, our revenge is a matter of time.”

US authorities allege that Al-Saadi is linked to Kata’ib Hezbollah and Iran’s IRGC and has been involved in multiple militant operations targeting Western and Jewish sites in Europe and North America, including incidents in Amsterdam, London, Toronto, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Ivanka Trump, 44, converted to Orthodox Judaism in 2009 prior to her marriage to businessman Jared Kushner. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, according to the report.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Senior Fellow at the Washington DC-based New Lines Institute, said: “Publicly available information shows that Mohammad Baqer was in contact and a close friend of …Qasem Soleimani and that in and of itself is a huge coup for any operative within the ranks of these militias, and on top of that he was then close to [Esmail] Qaani who replaced Soleimani.”

She also noted she could not confirm whether Al-Saadi was involved in her own past captivity, stating she only encountered masked captors.

According to Entifadh Qanbar, Al-Saadi viewed Soleimani as a mentor-like figure after the death of his father, Iranian brigadier general Ahmad Kazemi, in 2006.

Federal court documents also cite an earlier social media post attributed to Al-Saadi from August 2020, in which he wrote: “I will leave social media and turn off all my phones until the American enemy is defeated …victory or martyrdom.”

By Sabina Mammadli