Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps paid a Pakistani businessman to have her killed, warning that the regime is actively targeting Americans inside the United States.
“Someone was arrested and put in prison because he paid an informant to have me killed,” Haley said. “IRGC, the Iranian regime, paid a Pakistani businessman money to do it. They are targeting Americans on American soil. They have tried to get Trump multiple times.”
Haley was referring to Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani national who was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn in March on murder-for-hire and terrorism charges. The jury took about two hours to return its verdict, and Merchant faces up to life in prison.
According to prosecutors, Merchant traveled to the United States in 2024 on behalf of the IRGC to recruit people to carry out an assassination, as retaliation for the 2020 US strike that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. A man Merchant approached in New York reported him to the authorities and became an FBI informant. Merchant then met with undercover agents he believed were hitmen and paid them $5,000 in cash as an advance for killing “some political person.” He was arrested in July 2024 as he was trying to leave the country.
Testifying at his trial, he admitted that the IRGC sent him to organize the killings. He said his handler never named a specific target but raised three possible names: Donald Trump, then-President Joe Biden, and Haley. He claimed he acted under pressure because the IRGC threatened his family in Iran. Prosecutors rejected that defense, and he testified that he expected to earn as much as $1 million for his role.
Haley, a longtime Iran hawk, has previously said that in 2024 the FBI came to her home to warn her that the Iranian regime had put a hit on her life.
Her remarks come as the United States remains at war with Iran. The conflict began in late February with US-Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
