Ivanka Trump was reportedly the target of an assassination plot at the hands of an alleged IRGC-trained terrorist.
Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, planned to kill the US president’s eldest daughter, 44, as “revenge” for the death of his mentor, Qassim Soleimani, the New York Post reported.
The Iraqi national had apparently “pledged” to end Ms Trump’s life and had a blueprint of her home on the exclusive Indian Creek Island near Miami Beach, Florida, sources told the newspaper.
Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020. Donald Trump celebrated his death as a personal win. “We caught him in the act and terminated him,” the US president said at the time, later describing Soleimani as an “evil genius”.
The IRGC is a powerful, parallel branch of the Iranian Armed Forces that, among other things, conducts covert activities outside of Iran – Fatemeh Bahrami/Getty Images
Mr Al-Saadi reportedly became fixated with the idea of burning down “the house of Trump the way he burned down our house,’” Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché in the Iraqi embassy in Washington, DC, told the New York Post.
The 32-year-old, apparently a high-ranking figure in Iraqi and Iranian terror circles, is said to have posted a map on X which showed the location of Ms Trump’s $24m (£18m) home that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner, and their three children, Arabella Rose, Theodore James and Joseph Frederick.
Ivanka Trump shares three children with Jared Kushner, who is a senior advisor to her father – MANDEL NGAN
According to the New York Post, Mr Al-Saadi wrote in Arabic: “I say to the Americans look at this picture and know that neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you. We are currently in the stage of surveillance and analysis. I told you, our revenge is a matter of time.”
He was arrested on May 15 in Turkey and charged with 18 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the US, according to the US justice department (DoJ). It is not clear whether the charges related to the alleged plot to kill Ms Trump.
Most of Mr Al-Saadi’s alleged targets were Jewish, and he is accused of involvement in a shooting at the US consulate in Toronto and the firebombing of the Bank of New York Mellon in Amsterdam in March, as well as the stabbing of two Jewish people in London in April.
Ms Trump converted to Judaism in 2009 before her marriage to Mr Kushner, who is Jewish.
Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, right, with Qasem Soleimani – US District Court
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a senior fellow at the Washington-based New Lines Institute, claimed to the New York Post that Mr Al-Saadi was close to Soleimani, and looked up to him as a father figure following the death of his own father.
Mr Al-Saadi is reportedly being held in solitary confinement at the Brooklyn Detention Centre, where Luigi Mangione, the American man accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson, and Nicolás Maduro, the former president of Venezuela, are being held.
Sean “Diddy” Combs, the US rapper, was also housed in the high-security New York jail last year.
Lawyers for Mr Al-Saadi did not respond to comment when contacted by the New York Post.
The Telegraph has contacted both the White House and the DoJ for comment.