Iran sent a private letter to the Joe Biden administration last month vowing it wouldn’t plot to kill Donald Trump, according to a report.
The letter from Tehran — delivered on October 14 — came in response to US officials’ private hand-written warning to the country in September, relating that any threats against the then-Republican nominee’s life would be “treated as an act of war,” the Wall Street Journal first reported.
The promise not to kill the now president-elect contradicts Iran’s vow to avenge Qassem Soleimani — the commander of the Quds Force killed in a US airstrike in 2020 during Trump’s presidency.
However, the letter echoed its claim that Trump had committed a crime by directing the airstrike to target Soleimani. Tehran’s letter was not signed by a specific official, the Journal reported.
The revelation comes one week after the Justice Department announced that it had intercepted a fugitive Iranian government operative’s scheme to assassinate President-elect Trump before election day.
It also arrives months after Trump’s Secret Service presence was bolstered over the summer when the Biden administration learned of credible threats targeting US politicians.
The boost in his security detail happened mere weeks before a 20-year-old gunman opened fire at Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. There is no evidence to suggest the incidents are connected.
Amid these alleged threats on his life, Trump told reporters that he would consider a new nuclear agreement with the country — years after he pulled out of the 2015 landmark Iran nuclear deal during his first term.
At the time, he called it a “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made;” former Secretary of State John Kerry once lauded the agreement as making “the world a safer place”.
“We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal,” he said in late September, Politico reported.
Richard Nephew, once the Department of State’s Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption during the Biden administration, warned that Trump’s hopes could be far-fetched.
Tehran’s assurances in its recent note could help US-Iran relations, “but no one should be kidding themselves on how hard a deal would be to achieve on even just the nuclear issue given where Iran’s program is and the history” of the agreement, Nephew told the Journal.
More recently, on Monday, Elon Musk — the world’s richest person and Trump’s pick to lead the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency — met with Iran’s ambassador to the UN. The meeting, held in New York City, was meant to cool tensions between the two nations.
Iranian officials described the meeting to the New York Times as “positive” and “good news.”
