A Pakistani man accused of plotting with the Iranian government to murder public officials, including President Trump, was convicted on Friday of a plan that involved hiring hit men, stealing documents and assassinating high-ranking American officials.
Asif Merchant was found guilty of attempted terrorism transcending national boundaries and murder for hire, after a jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn deliberated for less than two hours.
The plan orchestrated by Mr. Merchant, according to evidence and testimony presented at a more than weeklong trial, came at the direction of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Mr. Merchant, 47, faces life in prison.
Iran enlisted Mr. Merchant to “sow mayhem and murder,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, said in a statement.
Mr. Merchant, wearing a gray pullover and listening through an Urdu interpreter, did not react as the judge, Eric R. Komitee, read the guilty counts on Friday.
Christopher Neff, a lawyer for Mr. Merchant, said in a statement that though his legal team was disappointed by the conviction, there were still “complex and significant legal issues yet to be decided.”
“We remain confident that we will ultimately achieve a favorable result for Mr. Merchant,” Mr. Neff said.
The trial unfolded as the war in Iran began and has expanded, with Iran targeting U.S. military bases and allies in the region, stoking fears of a broader conflict. Last Saturday, the United States and Israel struck Iran, killing its top leaders, including those the United States says have planned assassination plots like the one Mr. Merchant was behind. Mr. Trump has vowed to continue to bomb Iran until the government surrenders.
The case against Mr. Merchant, who was raised in Karachi, Pakistan, but traveled frequently to Iran, provided a rare glimpse in an American courtroom into some of the Iranian government’s efforts. Prosecutors depicted Mr. Merchant as a Shiite Muslim who had become a bumbling spy, enraged by the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the spymaster behind Iran’s security machine, who was killed by an American drone on Jan. 3, 2020.
Mr. Merchant posted photos on Facebook depicting Mr. Trump digging his own grave; a hand holding a decapitated head of Mr. Trump; and Mr. Trump with a pig juxtaposed next to him. On the day that Mr. Suleimani was killed, Mr. Merchant posted mournful images of the general and vowed “severe revenge.”
The evidence that Mr. Merchant plotted with the Iranian government was overwhelming, according to prosecutors, though he never came close to pulling off his scheme. It involved hiring small-time criminals to steal key documents, stage protests at political rallies, launder money and murder American politicians.
Making the unusual decision to testify in his own defense, he admitted on Wednesday that he had been recruited by a member of the Revolutionary Guards Corps to hatch a plot. He described himself as a successful business owner, who demonstrated to his Iranian contacts that he was serious about an assassination plot because he feared for his life.
“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” Mr. Merchant said on Wednesday.
In 2022, through a cousin, Mr. Merchant met a man named Mehrdad Yousef who was a Revolutionary Guards Corps official. Mr. Yousef asked if he was interested in working for the Iranian government, and Mr. Merchant said yes.
He was trained in counter-surveillance techniques by Mr. Yousef, he said, who instructed him to visit America to recruit people sympathetic to the Iranian regime. Mr. Yousef never told him to kill anyone in particular, but three names arose during their conversations: Mr. Trump, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina.
Prosecutors said Mr. Merchant’s garment business was a convenient cover for his plot. Different articles of clothing, including “denim,” “fleece” and “T-shirt,” referred to different elements of the assassination plots.
“ ‘Yarn dye’ referred to the killing,” Gilbert M. Rein, a federal prosecutor, said in court on Friday.
Mr. Merchant claimed that he knew the plan would not work when he arrived to Houston in April 2024. At the airport, his devices and bags were thoroughly searched by immigration agents, and he was interrogated about his recent travels to Iran.
Mr. Merchant was released, and continued with his plans.
The plot was foiled by a Pakistani American acquaintance who testified under the pseudonym Nadeem Ali. Mr. Ali, a former translator with the U.S. military, became an F.B.I. informant and secretly recorded their conversations, including a June 2024 meeting at a Queens hotel in which Mr. Merchant mapped out his scheme on a napkin, with an orange vape representing the target.
At a restaurant on Coney Island, Mr. Merchant told Mr. Ali that they would be paid for planning the operation, and that their earnings would “not be haram,” or forbidden by Islamic beliefs.
“This will be halal earning,” he said, a reference to something that is permissible, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Merchant paid $5,000, which he received from a cousin in Tanzania, to provide the hit men a down payment. But the supposed assassins were undercover F.B.I. agents.
Mr. Merchant’s lawyers presented him as a deeply religious man, with separate families in Iran and Pakistan. He may have made some “tasteless” social media posts, said Avraham C. Moskowitz, a lawyer for Mr. Merchant, but his plan stopped at hiring “some guys” who “might do something.”
“He had no intention of this mission succeeding,” Mr. Moskowitz said during his closing argument on Friday. “He was waiting to get arrested.”
Mr. Merchant was arrested on July 12, 2024, after federal prosecutors said they caught him trying to leave the country from Texas, where he was staying with relatives.
Days later, he was questioned in New York by F.B.I. agents. Mr. Merchant claims he told them he that wanted his family, whose safety he was concerned about, to come to the United States with green card status.
But Jacqueline Smith, an F.B.I. agent who questioned Mr. Merchant, said he had never brought up his family being threatened. Rather, he mentioned the killing of Mr. Suleimani, and seemed to think the Iranian government was behind the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump in Butler, Pa., the day after he was arrested, July 13.
“He said that he thought that Iran was responsible for that, because that’s the same thing he was sent here to do,” Ms. Smith said.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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