TEHRAN - Reports surfaced on Tuesday, Nov. 10, that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been relocated from his home in Washington, D.C., to a military base amid alleged Iranian assassination threats.
It was claimed that Tehran has ramped up its efforts to target senior U.S. officials overseas, with White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also relocating to military or protected housing in recent weeks, Fox News said.
A senior administration official claimed that threats against Bessent had reached "more than an advanced stage."
Analysts say the fact that the U.S. is pointing the finger of threat against Bessent is to deceive the public as he is the architect of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Analysts cite different and complementary reasons for such claims. For example, they say putting Miller, Rubio and Bessent among the protected figures are intended to demonize the Islamic Republic to justify their illegal war on the country.
A Iranian political official who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Tehran Times that threats of murder attributed to Tehran mainly originate from the fact that the U.S. has miserably failed to dislodge the Islamic Republic.
“They have not only failed to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran, they have also lost their face as the myth of the invincibility of the U.S. has been badly shattered.”
He added that the Republicans’ historic defeat in the midterm elections has had it own effects on the Trump administration to present Iran as a demon, especially as the Iran war and the resultant high energy prices are being cited for their defeat at home.
“The hardliners in the Trump administration have not only failed in the war against Iran, they have also suffered a defeat at home,” he insisted.
Reports also surfaced that three men, including one already jailed in the United States, were accused by U.S. authorities on Nov. 10 of being “Iran-supported operatives” who plotted nearly 20 attacks on Jewish communities in Europe and the U.S. as well as a planned assault on a British airbase used by the U.S. Air Force.
Charges against Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national; Mohsen Mohajeri, an Iranian national; and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national, were outlined in an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court. Only al-Saadi is in custody.
"These defendants helped orchestrate a campaign of terror on behalf of terrorist organizations affiliated with Iran that targeted Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, and the British military base, RAF Fairford, housing American service members," McDonald said, the Associated Press reported.
McDonald claimed that "the threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical — it is very real."
Before new allegations against Iran, federal prosecutors in 2024, charged Farhad Shakeri, an IRGC serviceman, with plotting to kill Donald Trump in retaliation for General Qassem Soleimani’s assassination in January 2020.
Claims of threats that Iran is seeking to target figures is not limited to the United States. Accusations of cyberattack and assassination attempts have also been made against Iran by two major European countries.
French officials claimed on Nov. 9 that the Islamic Revolution Gurd Corps were behind a cyber?attack which disrupted commercial refrigeration systems across France in October. Without providing any substantiated evidence, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot even threatened that his country could respond with cyber measures of its own.
Before allegations by France, Germany also made accusations against Iran.
For example, a German court on Oct. 15 handed two men prison sentences of up to 8-1/2 years under the accusation that they planned to kill the leader of a Jewish organization in Germany. The court claimed one man had been steered by Iran’s intelligence service.
“The court is convinced that the defendant, S., was recruited by the Iranian secret service and integrated into it to carry out state-sponsored terrorist activities in Germany under Iran’s direction,” the court in the northern city of Hamburg claimed in a statement.
All these unsubstantiated accusations are first and foremost are part of coordinated campaign to demonize Iran as they have faced economic and social problems at home and military and foreign policy failures abroad.