An Iraqi national trained by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pledged to kill Ivanka Trump and obtained a blueprint of her Florida home as part of a revenge plot tied to the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, the New York Post reported.
Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, was arrested in Turkey on May 15 and extradited to the United States, where the Department of Justice has charged him with 18 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the U.S. The alleged assassination plot against the president's daughter adds a chilling personal dimension to a case already spanning multiple countries and years of alleged terror operations.
The threat against Ivanka Trump, a 44-year-old mother who converted to Orthodox Judaism in 2009 before marrying Jared Kushner, was not some vague aspiration. Sources told the Post that Al-Saadi made a direct "pledge" to kill her and possessed a plan of her Florida residence, where she and Kushner own a $24 million home.
Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché in the Iraqi embassy in Washington, described the motive in plain terms to the Post:
"After Qasem was killed, he [Al-Saadi] went around telling people 'we need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house.'"
Qanbar, now president of Future Foundation, a nonprofit focused on strengthening U.S.-Iraqi Kurdish alliances, said Al-Saadi grew up in Baghdad, raised largely by his Iraqi mother. After his father, Ahmad Kazemi, an Iranian brigadier general, died in 2006, Al-Saadi reportedly viewed Soleimani as a father figure. He was sent to Tehran to train with the IRGC.
That personal bond apparently deepened over the years. The federal indictment includes photos Al-Saadi posted to his own Snapchat account showing him consulting with Soleimani at what appears to be a military facility, poring over maps and equipment. When the U.S. killed Soleimani in a January 2020 drone strike in Baghdad, Al-Saadi took it as a personal loss, and, sources say, a call to action.
A second source confirmed Al-Saadi's plot to kill Ivanka, the Post reported. The White House did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
For someone allegedly orchestrating international terror operations, Al-Saadi was remarkably visible online. He posted tourist selfies from the Eiffel Tower and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. He shared photos of himself kayaking and posing in front of a missile with his hand over his heart.
He also posted threats. On X, Al-Saadi shared a picture of a map showing the Florida enclave where Ivanka and Kushner live, alongside a message in Arabic that translates to:
"I say to the Americans look at this picture and know that neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you. We are currently in the stage of surveillance and analysis. I told you, our revenge is a matter of time."
In August 2020, seven months after Soleimani's death, Al-Saadi posted an image of Soleimani and another military figure killed in the same strike, held by a militant with an AK-47. His caption, per federal court documents: "I will leave social media and turn off all my phones until the American enemy is defeated...victory or martyrdom."
The digital blackout did not last. In a 2025 post he called his "last tweet," Al-Saadi referred to Soleimani and other Iranian military leaders killed in U.S. strikes as "martyrs." He wrote that he was in "great shock and intense weakness, a feeling I have never experience in my life except once, at the martyrdom of...Qasem Soleimani," per court documents.
Al-Saadi also allegedly sent threatening Snapchat messages and social media posts to potential victims, in many cases including a photograph of a pistol with a silencer, per messages seen by the Post.
The DOJ charges paint a picture of sustained, coordinated violence. Al-Saadi is accused of involvement in the firebombing of the Bank of New York Mellon in Amsterdam in March, the stabbing of two Jewish victims in London in April, and a shooting at the U.S. consulate building in Toronto, also in March.
He also allegedly "planned, coordinated" and took responsibility for attacks against Jewish targets, including the bombing of a synagogue in Liège, Belgium, and the arson of a temple in Rotterdam in March, federal authorities said. Additional foiled plots in the U.S. were tied to the current conflict in the Middle East.
The scope of the charges, 18 attacks and attempted attacks, reflects an operational tempo that should concern anyone paying attention to the reach of Iran-backed terror networks into Western countries. When prominent public figures and their families face direct personal threats, the stakes of counterterrorism policy become impossible to ignore.
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Senior Fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based New Lines Institute, provided further context on Al-Saadi's standing within Iran's proxy network. Tsurkov was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2023 and held hostage by Kata'ib Hezbollah for 903 days before her release in September 2025. She told the Post that publicly available information shows Al-Saadi was in contact with and a close friend of Soleimani:
"Publicly available information shows that Mohammad Baqer was in contact and a close friend of...Qasem Soleimani and that in and of itself is a huge coup for any operative within the ranks of these militias, and on top of that he was then close to [Esmail] Qaani who replaced Soleimani."
Tsurkov said she did not know if Al-Saadi was one of her kidnappers, as she only saw them masked. She told the Post that Al-Saadi maintained a close relationship with Soleimani's replacement, Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, who continued to provide him with resources for his terror networks.
Al-Saadi is described as an operative of both Kata'ib Hizballah and Iran's IRGC, with alleged links to Lebanese paramilitary force Hezbollah as well.
Qanbar told the Post that when Al-Saadi was arrested in Turkey, he carried an Iraqi service passport, a special travel document issued to government employees and civil servants that can only be obtained with the consent of the Iraqi Prime Minister. That passport allowed him to travel freely, bypass minimal or no security checks at Iraqi airports, and access VIP airport lounges.
While passport holders would still face security screenings elsewhere, the document made it far easier for Al-Saadi to obtain visas to the countries where he allegedly planned attacks, Qanbar said. Al-Saadi was reportedly in transit to Russia when Turkish authorities arrested him.
Al-Saadi later established a travel agency specializing in religious trips, which Qanbar alleged allowed him to move around the world and "connect with terror cells." The arrangement gave an alleged high-ranking terror operative a commercial reason to be in any number of countries, a tidy piece of operational cover.
A lawyer for Al-Saadi did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
Al-Saadi is currently held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which also houses accused CEO shooter Luigi Mangione and captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
The case raises questions that deserve answers. How did an alleged terror operative with direct ties to the IRGC and Kata'ib Hizballah obtain an Iraqi government service passport? What Iraqi officials facilitated that document? And how did a man who posted surveillance maps and open threats on social media operate freely for years across multiple continents before anyone stopped him?
The 2020 strike that killed Soleimani was one of the most consequential counterterrorism decisions of the Trump presidency. Critics at the time warned it would provoke retaliation. What they rarely acknowledged was that the retaliation was already underway, and that Iran's proxy networks were already targeting Americans and their allies worldwide. Al-Saadi's alleged plot is a reminder that the threat did not end with Soleimani's death. It metastasized.
President Trump ordered the strike that took out one of the world's most dangerous military commanders. The answer from Tehran's network, allegedly, was to go after his daughter. That tells you everything about who we are dealing with, and why weakness is not an option.