A crowdfunding effort that claims to have raised a $40 million bounty for the assassination of President Trump has been linked to a former employee of Iran’s primary propaganda network.
The campaign, organized by a group known as the “Blood Covenant,” comes after multiple radical Iranian clerics issued fatwas, or death warrants, against Trump – denouncing him as an “enemy of Allah” after the US military bombed three of Tehran’s nuclear facilities last month.
“We pledge to award the prize to whoever can bring the militants and those who threaten the life of the Deputy of Imam Mahdi (may our souls be sacrificed for him) to justice for their actions,” the Blood Covenant wrote on its website.
The unhinged message also included a Trump image in crosshairs.
Blood Covenant operates “under the aegis of the Iranian regime,” according to the US-based Middle East Media Research Institute think tank.
The think tank said that Blood Covenant quotes a verse from the Quran demanding Muslims “strive with your wealth and your lives in the cause of Allah.”
“This is a call to jihad, inviting believers to donate their money and sacrifice their lives,” MEMRI said in an analysis of the fundraising effort. “The poster lends religious legitimacy to assassinating Trump.
“The fact that these calls to assassinate Trump are coming from above and being echoed in the street and through all strata of society, including in the Iranian media … reflects a broad religious and regime consensus strengthened by reiterated emphasis of the reward anyone carrying out the punishment against Trump can expect to receive — in addition to the $40.3 million, also Paradise and the status of a defender of Islam.”
Max Lesser and Maria Riofrio, analysts with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “unmasked an Iranian national” Friday who they believe is involved in the Blood Covenant.
“The man apparently behind it, Hossein Abbasifar, appears to have once worked for Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the regime’s main propaganda network,” they wrote in an analysis piece.
FDD linked the fundraising campaign to Abbasifar using metadata on Blood Covenant’s website.
Lesser and Riofrio found that Abbasifar may have served as a specialist at the “Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran” – a state-sponsored radio network.
The analysts noted that by attributing the creation of the Trump bounty website to specific individuals, the US government would be able “to levy targeted sanctions against those responsible.”
“The US government has an opportunity to set an example by holding him accountable,” Lesser and Riofrio wrote.
The White House and State Department did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
A senior State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon on Friday that the Trump administration is aware of the threats and committed to “hold[ing] bad actors accountable.”
“This means using every tool at our disposal, including sanctions, to implement the president’s maximum pressure strategy,” the senior official told the outlet.
The bounty on Trump’s head was promoted after Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, an Iranian cleric close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa against Trump on June 29.
Shirazi accused Trump of trying to kill Khamenei and declared the president to be “an enemy of Allah.”
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