The bizarre case of two men who posed as DHS agents, ingratiating themselves with four Secret Service employees, took an unexpected turn when it was revealed that the men are under investigation for having possible ties to Iranian intelligence — specifically, the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Investigators allege that Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, posed as various officers and employees of the U.S. government, including members of federal law enforcement agencies, since February 2020. During that time, they got close to four Secret Service agents — including an agent assigned to Jill Biden’s protection detail — by supplying them with perks and gifts, including the use of a $40,000-a-year apartment.
The agents have since vacated the apartment, so investigators aren’t sure if their conversations were bugged or not.
The end game of the fraudsters is still unknown, although the ties to the IRGC would suggest that terrorism was a distinct possibility.
Prosecutors said Thursday that Ali told witnesses he had connections to the Pakistani Intelligence Service, which the government said it has not yet verified. Prosecutors also said the government recovered his passport containing three “older” Pakistani visas and two Iranian visas from 2019 and January 2020. There was an indication on Ali’s Iranian visa that he had entered that country at some point, prosecutors said, although they did not specify when.
The government also indicated they had a hard time pinning down an exact address for Taherzadeh, but signs point to the fact that he is currently a U.S. citizen.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed late Wednesday following the multi-agency raid on a Washington, D.C., apartment complex, the duo allegedly obtained paraphernalia, handguns and assault rifles used by federal law enforcement agencies. The FBI claimed they used their false associations with the U.S. government “to ingratiate themselves with members of federal law enforcement and the defense community” by providing gifts and favors to residents of an apartment building, many of whom were employees of the FBI, Secret service, and the Department of Homeland Security and Defense.
The two men allegedly gave the Secret Service members the rent-free luxury apartment, “iPhones, surveillance systems, a drone, a flat-screen television, a case for storing an assault rifle, a generator, and law enforcement paraphernalia.”
Among the items seized by the FBI in the raid were “ballistic vests, zip ties, handcuffs, radios, a drone, DHS patches on vests and clothing, training manuals and surveillance equipment.”
Where did they get all this stuff?
According to the affidavit in support of the criminal charges, confidential witnesses alleged the men collectively used fraudulent government email addresses, asserted they had government-issued vehicles, and claimed to have access to personal information of all the residents at the apartment complex in question via their purported jobs in law enforcement.
The pair allegedly recruited an individual to apply for a fraudulent DHS/HSI position, a process that required the applicant tobe “shot with an Airsoft rifle to evaluate their pain tolerance and reaction,” according to the charging documents.
The Secret Service agents weren’t paying for any of this stuff so it couldn’t be some kind of elaborate con. And the fact that many of these gifts were of high-dollar value strongly suggests a foreign government is behind whatever the plan turns out to be.
If the men had ties to the Quds Force, it’s a good bet they were hip-deep in planning some kind of terrorist attack. The Quds Force is notorious for its assassination teams that murder Iranian dissidents abroad. The Quds Force was also responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq. Their commander, General Qasem Soleimani, murdered hundreds of Americans as well as dissidents in several countries before he was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike in 2020.
It would be in keeping with the Quds Force philosophy to try to assassinate Jill Biden in retaliation. So perhaps the ultimate motive of the two men isn’t quite so obscure.
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