Iran put a $5,000 bounty on the President of the United States.
That's not a metaphor or an intelligence assessment – it's a fact entered into evidence in a Brooklyn federal courtroom this week.
Now the man who ordered it is dead.
Asif Merchant Trial: The IRGC Hit Man Who Said He Was Counting on Getting Caught
Asif Merchant, a 47-year-old Pakistani national with a direct line to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, sat before a Brooklyn jury on Wednesday and admitted everything.
He hired two men he believed were Mafia killers to murder a sitting American political figure – almost certainly Donald Trump.
He sketched the assassination plan on a napkin in a New York hotel room, placed an orange vape on the table to mark the target, and handed over $5,000 in cash as a down payment.
The two "hit men" turned out to be undercover FBI agents.
Merchant's defense: he didn't really mean it.
He testified through an Urdu interpreter that Iranian Revolutionary Guard handlers threatened his family in Tehran, leaving him no choice but to play along – and that he fully expected to get arrested before anyone died.
Federal prosecutors aren't buying it.
They pointed out that Merchant never contacted law enforcement before his arrest.
In his subsequent FBI interviews, prosecutors noted, he "neglected to mention any facts" that would support a duress defense.
He researched Trump rally locations online.
He sketched attack angles on a napkin using a vape pen to mark the target.
He pulled together $5,000 from a cousin to pay the supposed killers.
How the IRGC Built a Murder for Hire Network Inside America
This wasn't a lone wolf.
FBI Special Agent Jacqueline Smith testified that Merchant told investigators his cousin Hasnain Hyderi – an IRGC operative living in Tanzania – connected him to an Iranian handler named Mehradad Yousef, based in the holy city of Qom.
Yousef directed the operation from Iran.
He told Merchant the targets: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Nikki Haley.
He told Merchant the rules: if you notice surveillance, act normal.
And when the $5,000 down payment was made, the plan was to reimburse it through IRGC channels.
After Trump ordered the killing of IRGC General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Tehran vowed revenge.
What followed wasn't rhetoric.
Federal prosecutors charged a separate Iranian operative in 2022 for plotting to kill Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton – offering $300,000 for the job.
A 2024 DOJ criminal complaint named Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan-born IRGC asset, for directly plotting Trump's murder during the presidential campaign.
In every case, the Quds Force ran the same play: find a cutout, pay cash, stay in the shadows.
Operation Epic Fury Killed the Man Who Ordered It
On Wednesday morning – the same day Merchant was testifying in Brooklyn – War Secretary Pete Hegseth walked into the Pentagon briefing room and announced something that changed the entire picture.
"The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed," Hegseth said.
"Iran tried to kill President Trump. And President Trump got the last laugh."
The killing happened Tuesday – from the air, as part of Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign now hitting over 2,000 Iranian targets.
Hegseth said the official was connected to the broader Iranian assassination plotting against Trump – the same campaign at the center of the Merchant trial – and confirmed he personally ensured the figure was placed on the target list.
Trump, in a Sunday phone call with ABC News before the announcement, said it plainly: "I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first."
Think about what that means.
While a federal jury in Brooklyn heard testimony about $5,000 in blood money and napkin assassination plans, the American military was simultaneously erasing the chain of command that authorized the attempt.
The Yousef network directed Merchant from Qom.
The Shakeri network targeted Trump during his campaign.
The Bolton plot offered $300,000 through IRGC cutouts.
Iran didn't just threaten the President – they built a bureaucracy around killing him.
Trump responded not with a strongly worded letter or a new round of sanctions, but with the most powerful air campaign since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, twice the firepower of shock and awe, targeting every node of the apparatus that tried to have him murdered.
The man on trial in Brooklyn sketched a kill plan on a napkin and handed over five thousand dollars.
The man who gave the order is dead.
Sources:
- Stephen Sorace, "Man accused of plotting Trump assassination claims Iran forced him to," Fox News, March 5, 2026.
- Brooke Singman, "Hegseth says leader behind effort to assassinate Trump has been 'hunted down and killed,'" Fox News, March 4, 2026.
- Olivia Rondeau, "U.S. Kills Iranian Official Who Plotted 2024 Trump Assassination Attempt," Breitbart News, March 4, 2026.
- John Annese, "Murder-for-hire plot had ties to Iranian Revolutionary Guards, FBI witness says," amNewYork, March 3, 2026.
- John Annese, "In surprise testimony, defendant explains ties to Iran at Brooklyn murder-for-hire trial," amNewYork, March 5, 2026.