The FBI systematically manufactured Iranian assassination plots against Donald Trump while Israeli intelligence and Israel-aligned figures worked to ensure he believed them—a coordinated campaign that exploited his genuine fear of assassination to foreclose his anti-interventionist instincts and lock him onto a war path, according to an investigative report by Max Blumenthal published March 6 at The Grayzone.
Blumenthal’s central case is Asif Merchant, a Pakistani salesman now on trial in Brooklyn for allegedly directing an IRGC plot to kill Trump. Per Blumenthal’s reconstruction, Merchant was flagged at Houston’s airport (possibly on an Israeli intelligence tip), admitted under a special FBI parole arrangement, immediately introduced to a confidential informant, and walked through a contrived plot under which he ultimately handed $5,000 to FBI informants posing as hitmen. The New York Times concluded he “had never been close to realizing the vision of his Iranian handler,” and an internal Bureau of Prisons memo confirmed no actual IRGC associates of Merchant were ever identified in the U.S.
After the very real Butler assassination attempt by a lone American gunman, Israeli intelligence passed the FBI a tip connecting shooter Thomas Crooks to Iran. It was assessed as not credible, but it arrived and did its psychological work. Simultaneously, Rep. Mike Waltz—who became one of the loudest public voices tying Butler to Iran—was described by AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt in private comments as one of Israel’s “lifelines” inside the Trump administration, groomed by the lobby since his first congressional run. Netanyahu himself appeared on Fox News to assert, without evidence, that Iran had been behind both Butler and Mar-a-Lago, exploiting the president’s fears with evident precision.