Iran Threatens the U.S.: The Plots That Reached a Courtroom

Game Theory Today · Short · Published 2026-11-13 on YouTube

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has moved from his Washington home to a military base after U.S. officials assessed that Iranian plotting against him had advanced. Bessent has run Operation Economic Outcast, the Treasury campaign to cut off cash to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, since August. The move looks less like an overreaction when it is set beside the Iran plots that courts in three countries have ruled on this year.

Iran plots that ended in convictions

Brooklyn, March 6. A federal jury convicted Asif Merchant of murder for hire and attempting an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries. He testified that a Revolutionary Guard handler sent him to the United States to hire hit men against American politicians and officials. The men he hired were undercover FBI agents.
Manhattan, January and May. Carlisle Rivera was sentenced to 15 years and Jonathan Loadholt to 10 years for their roles in an Iran-directed plot against the journalist Masih Alinejad in New York. The offer for the job was $100,000.
Hamburg, October 15. A German court sentenced two men to 8.5 and 4.5 years for a Quds Force-directed plot against Volker Beck, head of the German-Israeli Society. The presiding judge described the crimes as terrorist activities orchestrated by Iran.
London, October 16. A Norwegian teenager was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court to 20 years for traveling to Britain to carry out a contract killing. He was recruited through an online game by the Foxtrot Network, a Swedish crime group that British police link to the Iranian government. The 17-year-old who hired him was convicted in Norway.
London, November 12. A Woolwich Crown Court jury convicted two men under the National Security Act of surveilling Iran International journalists on behalf of Iranian intelligence. A third defendant was acquitted.

What is still an allegation

An indictment unsealed in Manhattan on November 10 charges three men with a planned attack on RAF Fairford, the English base that hosts American bombers, and with roughly twenty plots against Jewish communities in Europe and the United States. One defendant is in U.S. custody, and two are at large. Those charges have not been tried. Iran denies involvement in all of these cases, and U.S. officials assess that its capacity for large-scale attacks abroad is limited.

Iran hires out

The defendants in the adjudicated cases were a Pakistani businessman, two New Yorkers, a Danish national, and a Norwegian teenager. In case after case, the person arrested was a contractor and not an Iranian intelligence officer: local, paid in cash, and easy to deny.

A network of contractors runs on money. That is one reading of why the official running the sanctions campaign became a target. Every conviction listed here came before the attack happened, which is the other half of the record: the instruments doing the work are sanctions and criminal prosecutions.

Related analysis from Competitive Futures

Sources

U.S. Department of Justice, “Iranian Intelligence Agent Convicted of Terrorism and Murder for Hire in Connection with Foiled Plot to Assassinate U.S. Politicians and Government Officials,” United States v. Merchant, E.D.N.Y. 24-CR-362, March 6, 2026
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, sentencing of Carlisle Rivera, January 28, 2026
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, sentencing of Jonathan Loadholt, May 27, 2026
U.S. Department of Justice, indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York, United States v. Al-Saadi et al., November 10, 2026
Hamburg court, judgment in the Volker Beck plot, October 15, 2026
Woolwich Crown Court, sentencing of Johannes Natland, October 16, 2026
Woolwich Crown Court, jury verdict under the National Security Act 2023, November 12, 2026
U.S. Department of the Treasury, spokesperson statement on Operation Economic Outcast, November 2026