Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old man who is suspected of an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, had connections in Iran that are leading some security experts to question if there was Iranian involvement.
A New York Times reporter who had interviewed Routh last year wrote on Sunday that Routh was working to recruit former Afghan special operations soldiers who had fled to Iran to go fight in Ukraine.
The reporter, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, wrote that when he was writing an article on volunteer fighters in Ukraine last year, his former Afghan colleague and friend Najim Rahim had put him in touch with Routh, who he had learned about from a source of his in Iran, a former Afghan special operations soldier.
A number of U.S.-trained Afghan special operations forces had fled to Iran after the disastrous Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Since those forces were trained by U.S. special operations forces, the Afghan commandos’ escape into Iran potentially delivered “closely guarded secrets on U.S. special operators” to Iran, according to Foreign Policy.
Neff suggested that Afghan commandos were interested in fighting in Ukraine because “anything, even war, was better than the conditions in Iran for Afghans after the Taliban retook Kabul in August of 2021.”
However, other outlets reported that Iran and Russia were actually recruiting those Afghan commandos to go fight for them in Yemen and Ukraine.
According a November 7, 2022, Voice of America report, the former Afghan army chief, General Haibatullah Alizai, said, “When former Afghan military members go to immigration bureaus in Iran to extend their visas, they are told to go to Yemen to fight in support of the Houthis.”
Mohammad Farid Ahmadi, the former commander of Afghanistan’s elite National Army Commando Corps, also told VOA that former Afghan special forces now are engaged in “six critical areas” of the world: Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, Yemen, Iran, Syria and Russia, but “in small groups.”
And according to the report, Russia was offering them $1,500-a-month payments and promises of safe havens for themselves and their families.
Routh’s efforts to recruit former Afghan special operations forces in Iran to go fight in Ukraine would have likely — at the least — put him on the radar of the Iranian and Russian governments, and possibly have exposed him to Iranian and Russian exploitation or manipulation, and even cooperation.
While Routh expressed hostility towards Russia, he had a record of sympathizing with Iran.
In 2023, he self-published an e-book that apologized to Iran for personally having voted for Trump, who he said “ended up being brainless” for dismantling the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal.
“I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake,” he wrote, according to Time. “You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment.”
While Routh seemed to sympathize with Iran and not Russia, both countries are reportedly working closely together in Ukraine. According to an article published on Substack by a visiting fellow at Harvard University, Russia is working with Iranian engineers to reverse engineer U.S.-made military equipment captured on the frontlines of Ukraine.
With Routh’s travel to Ukraine, as well as to Washington, D.C., to reportedly meet with U.S. lawmakers, officials, and staffers in Washington, D.C., he could have been seen as an enticing target for both Iran and Russia.
Routh also suggested he worked with former U.S. naval intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance, who had also gone to Ukraine to volunteer with the Ukrainian military. Routh has claimed he was rejected from fighting for Ukraine because he was too old and lacked military experience.
The Times’ Gibbons-Neff also reported that Routh had been trying to recruit Afghans in Pakistan to go fight in Ukraine as well, and that he planned to purchase fake passports for recruits in Pakistan, “since it’s such a corrupt country.”
Mike Benz, a cybersecurity expert and former State Department official, argued in an interview that Routh may have been part of an alleged Iranian plot to kill Trump that involved Iran and Pakistan.
He said Tuesday in an interview on the Real America’s Voice’s War Room that Routh “sounds like exactly the operation the CIA described a month ago.” Benz said:
It was only one month ago, about like five weeks ago, we were told that the CIA had foiled an attempted assassination plot against Donald Trump by a Pakistani national with ties to Iran, who was plotting a murder for hire operation to have somebody in the United States shoot Donald Trump.
Ryan Routh was seeking recruits from among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. Mr. Routh, who spent several months in Ukraine last year, said he planned to move them, in some cases, illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens expressed interest. He actually said thousands on his Facebook page.
And then, Ryan Routh continued, we can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan… . So Ryan Routh is bringing Pakistani nationals through Iran to his warfighting effort. He’s the guy who we’re told just attempted to assassinate Trump. A month ago, the CIA said they had advanced knowledge of a plot to assassinate Trump that was connected to Pakistani nationals traveling through Iran. Now, you know, not to put the cart before the horse, but Ryan Routh sounds like exactly the operation the CIA described a month ago.
Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino also discussed the possibility of Iran’s involvement in the assassination attempt against Trump during his show on Monday.
“We know for a fact that foreign nationals have used social engineering to ingratiate themselves with Secret Service agents,” he said. “The mole may not be a foreign national themselves… . Is there a honeypot trap going on in the Secret Service? Is there a guy or a woman in the Secret Service having a relationship with someone who is not who they say they are? The Iranians have been running these traps in Israel and elsewhere. The Iranians — who want to kill President Trump and have a documented multi-year history of trying to get a long-range sniper threat against President Trump.”
“How do we know that there’s not some kind of honeypot trap, and some agent or some DHS personnel — someone who has to be notified — is not in a relationship with someone? It is time to start asking serious questions,” he said.
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