Federal authorities have charged a 32-year-old Iraqi operative with connections to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after investigators determined he had allegedly made a specific pledge to assassinate Ivanka Trump as revenge for the 2020 United States drone strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, and had gone beyond words to gather what prosecutors describe as architectural plans of her Florida residence where she lives with her husband Jared Kushner.
The suspect is Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, described by US prosecutors as a senior figure within Iraq-Iran terror networks and a member of Kata’ib Hizballah, the US-designated foreign terrorist organization that operates as one of the primary Iran-backed militias in Iraq.
He was arrested in Turkey on May 15, 2026 and subsequently extradited to the United States, where the Department of Justice has charged him with involvement in 18 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and North America in addition to the alleged plot against Ivanka Trump.
The New York Post and The Telegraph first reported the details of the Ivanka Trump component of the case on Saturday May 23.
The source that gave the plot its most vivid expression is Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché at the Iraqi embassy in Washington, who told the Post what he heard Al-Saadi saying in the period after Soleimani’s death.
“After Qasem was killed, he went around telling people ‘we need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house.'”
The 2020 Killing That Started This
On January 3, 2020, a United States drone strike at Baghdad International Airport killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, the elite unit responsible for Iran’s proxy warfare operations throughout the Middle East.
Soleimani was one of the most powerful military figures in the Islamic Republic and the architect of Iran’s network of affiliated militias across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
He was also, by the assessment of multiple US administrations across both parties, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American service members through the proxy attacks his organization planned, funded and directed.
President Trump ordered the strike. The Iranian government promised revenge.
The IRGC and its affiliated organizations carried out that promise in multiple documented ways in the years that followed, plots against former national security officials, against journalists, against members of the Trump family.
The Department of Justice has prosecuted multiple Iran-linked assassination plots in American courts since 2020, and each successive indictment has reflected the same underlying operational logic. The IRGC views the killing of Soleimani as a debt that must be repaid through violence against Americans associated with the decision.
Al-Saadi’s alleged pledge was specific in its targeting and its framing. The Soleimani killing was personal for him, Qanbar described Al-Saadi viewing Soleimani as a mentor.
The pledge to kill Ivanka Trump was framed not as a military operation but as a reciprocal destruction, burning down the house of Trump the way Trump burned down their house.
The metaphorical specificity of that framing reflects an understanding of the Soleimani strike as an attack on a family rather than a military target, to be answered in kind by striking Trump’s family.
The Evidence Investigators Collected
The detail that distinguishes the Al-Saadi case from a simple statement of violent intent is the evidence of operational preparation.
Prosecutors allege that Al-Saadi possessed architectural plans of Ivanka Trump’s Florida residence, a specific piece of operational intelligence that reflects the difference between someone who expresses hatred and someone who is building toward an attack.
Qanbar told the Post, “We heard that he had a plan of Ivanka’s house in Florida.”
The possession of a residence layout is a step in operational planning, it allows an attacker to study entry and exit points, understand the physical layout in relation to security measures and identify specific locations within or around the property that are relevant to carrying out an attack.
That Al-Saadi allegedly possessed such plans, combined with his public statements of intent and his social media threats, produced the evidentiary picture that led to his arrest in Turkey and his extradition to the United States.
His online activity added another dimension to the case. He allegedly posted threats in Arabic warning that neither the “palaces nor the Secret Service” would protect the targets of his intentions, a direct challenge to the protective apparatus that surrounds Ivanka Trump as a former senior White House official and the daughter of a sitting president.
He claimed in those posts that surveillance efforts were already underway.
The 18 Other Charges And Who Al-Saadi Is
The Ivanka Trump plot is one component of a broader federal case against Al-Saadi that encompasses 18 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and North America.
The specific nature of those 18 incidents, which European countries, which American cities, which targets, which methods, has not been fully detailed in the initial reporting.
What is clear is that prosecutors are treating him as a senior operational figure in the Iran-backed terror network rather than a peripheral actor with violent ideas.
Kata’ib Hizballah, the Iraqi Shia militia to which Al-Saadi is linked, is one of the primary instruments of Iranian proxy power in Iraq.
The organization has been responsible for multiple attacks on American forces in Iraq and on American interests in the region, and it maintains direct operational and financial relationships with the IRGC’s Quds Force.
A senior figure in Kata’ib Hizballah with IRGC training and connections represents a genuine operational capacity, not just ideological commitment but the organizational infrastructure and specialized skills that make violence against protected targets possible.
His arrest in Turkey on May 15, the same day Stewart McLean was last seen in Lions Bay, British Columbia, a coincidence with no operational connection, and his subsequent extradition to the United States brings him into American federal custody and American federal courts, where the full weight of the indictment against him will be tested.
The Pattern Of IRGC Threats Against The Trump Family And Officials
The Al-Saadi case fits within a documented pattern of IRGC-linked threats against American political figures that has been prosecuted in federal courts over the past several years.
The Department of Justice announced charges in November 2024 against a separate IRGC-linked operative accused of planning to assassinate Donald Trump himself.
Prior charges addressed alleged plots against former National Security Adviser John Bolton and others associated with the Soleimani strike decision.
The Iran war that began on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure, has intensified rather than resolved the IRGC’s motivation to strike back against American targets.
The Soleimani killing predated the current conflict by more than six years. The current conflict has added additional American actions against Iranian interests to the ledger that the IRGC and its affiliated organizations view as demanding a violent response.
Donald Trump canceled plans to attend his son Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding due to the escalating tensions with Iran, a specific operational security decision that reflects the ongoing assessment of the threat environment in which the first family is operating.
What’s Next?
Al-Saadi is in US federal custody. He faces charges related to 18 attacks and attempted attacks in addition to the alleged assassination plot against Ivanka Trump.
The federal judicial process that follows his extradition will determine the evidentiary basis for each charge and the legal consequences he faces if convicted.
The investigation into the broader network he allegedly operated within — Kata’ib Hizballah, the IRGC Quds Force and whatever other individuals and organizations were aware of or involved in the plots he allegedly participated in, continues. The arrest of one operative rarely ends the investigation of the network around him.
Ivanka Trump has not commented publicly. The Secret Service, which provides protective security for former senior White House officials and immediate family members of sitting presidents, has not commented on security arrangements.
