FBI puts IRGC operative on its Most Wanted Terrorists list, $20 million reward, over plot to murder two former U.S. officials

The FBI added Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to its Most Wanted Terrorists list on Tuesday. He is accused of trying to hire someone to murder two former U.S. government officials between October 2021 and April 2022, JNS reports.

A reward of up to $20 million is on offer for information about Poursafi, who also goes by "Mehdi Rezayi." The FBI is also asking for information about three of his IRGC associates: Mohammad Reza Ansari, Abolfazl Alizadeh and Mohammad Hossein Shamoradizadeh.

According to court documents, the plots were most likely meant as revenge for the U.S. strike that killed Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. Poursafi was charged in 2022 with using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of a murder-for-hire and with providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot.

The FBI says Ansari is a deputy in the IRGC-Quds Force's Unit 840 and supports its operations in Syria. Alizadeh and Shamoradizadeh are battalion commanders in the Basij Imam Ali Battalion and have "participated in lethal plotting," the bureau said. The Treasury Department has already sanctioned Ansari and Poursafi for acting on behalf of the Quds Force.

"The FBI will not stand for the IRGC's brazen attempts to silence, harm or murder activists, dissidents, journalists, public officials or anyone else it deems a threat," said Gregory Heeb, who heads counterterrorism at the FBI's Washington Field Office.