NEW YORK: A court in the United States held on Friday that a Pakistani man with alleged “ties to Iran was guilty of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump” or other US officials in retaliation for the American military killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, prosecutors said.

Asif Raza Merchant allegedly sought to hire a hitman to assassinate a politician or a government official in the US, prosecutors said during the trial in a federal court in Brooklyn.

Soleimani, the head of Iran’s foreign military operations, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in Jan 2020. Iran has repeatedly vowed to avenge his killing.

Merchant testified that he was forced into the plot to protect his family in the Iranian capital Tehran from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, adding that he thought he would get caught before anyone was killed, multiple media outlets reported.

He said he was never ordered to kill a specific person, but added that his Iranian contact had mentioned three people in connection with the plot — President Trump, former president Joe Biden and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.

Merchant will be sentenced at an unconfirmed future date after his conviction on both counts that he faced — transnational terrorism and murder for hire ­— a spokesman for prosecutors said. He could face life imprisonment.

US officials previously said Merchant had “close ties to Iran” and described his alleged plot as “strai­ght out of the Iranian regime’s playbook”.

Merchant was arrested on July 12, 2024, as he planned to leave the United States.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2026