Pompeo takes reports of threat to assassinate US ambassador “very seriously”

Washington: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that he is taking “seriously” press reports that Iran has hatched a plot to “assassinate” a US ambassador, with information ridiculed by Tehran, confirming that it is ” unfounded “.

The American Politico news site quoted two unidentified US officials as saying that intelligence services believe the Iranian government plans to assassinate the US ambassador to South Africa, Lana Marks, who is close to President Donald Trump.

The website quoted its sources as saying that this plan was discovered by Washington in the spring and its features became more precise in recent weeks, noting that Tehran had planned to assassinate Ambassador Marx in revenge for the assassination of the Quds Force commander. in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, General Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated on Trump’s orders in January in an attack. US Air Force.

On Monday, Pompeo told Fox News: “We take these kinds of reports very seriously.”

He added: “We know that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the first country to support terrorism in the world, and that they (the Iranians) have carried out such killings before” in “Europe and elsewhere.”

“We will do everything possible to protect all State Department officials,” the US Secretary of State said, warning Tehran that “to attack any American, regardless of place or time, be it diplomat, ambassador or military, it is absolutely unacceptable. “

Previously, Iran’s Foreign Ministry responded to Politico’s report saying that what the US news site reported was simply “false information” and “baseless.”

And the Iranian Foreign Ministry considered, according to its spokesman, that this information is nothing more than “repetitive and nauseating methods to create an environment hostile to Iran in the international arena.”

He added that Iran “has demonstrated its enduring commitment to international diplomatic principles and practices,” while the Trump administration “has hit the wall with many internationally accepted standards and methods.”

Tensions escalated between Tehran and Washington after Trump withdrew from the major power nuclear deal with Iran in May 2018 and re-imposed severe US economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic, in implementation of the policy of “maximum pressure “who wants to force Iran to accept an” agreement “. Best”.

Tensions between the two countries culminated in Soleimani’s assassination near the Baghdad airport on January 3, in a raid by a US drone.