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Iran’s President Says His Country Won’t Try To Assassinate President-Elect Trump

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted in an interview his country “never” plotted to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump during last year’s U.S. election campaign − and never will in the future.

Pezeshkian made the claim less than a week before Trump returns to the White House, denying previous assertions from Trump and the U.S. government about an Iranian plot. In his first term, Trump pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. He sought to wreck its economy through intensified sanctions aimed at forcing Tehran to negotiate a deal on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs as well as other destabilizing regional activities.

More recently, reports have emerged that Trump may be willing to join or support Israel, emboldened by its recent successes against Iran-backed militants in the Middle East, in military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“This is another one of those schemes that Israel and other countries are designing to promote Iranophobia,” Pezeshkian told NBC News’ Lester Holt. “Iran has never attempted to nor does it plan to assassinate anyone.”

Pezeshkian said that Iran’s adversaries were accusing Tehran of trying to build a nuclear bomb “to fabricate some sort of a pretext” to attack it. “This is not true,” he added.

The U.S. Justice Department in November charged an Iranian man with a plot allegedly ordered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to kill Trump when he was the Republican presidential candidate. The alleged attempt on Trump’s life was thwarted before any attack was carried out. U.S. authorities said the plot was part of Iran’s efforts to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general who was killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike ordered by Trump. In September, Trump said on the campaign trail Iran may have been behind attempts to kill him.

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