An Iraqi national trained by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps allegedly pledged to assassinate Ivanka Trump and obtained a blueprint of her Florida home in 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 he faces federal charges connected to 18 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the U.S. The Department of Justice described him as an operative of both Kata'ib Hizballah and Iran's IRGC.
The assassination plot against the president's eldest daughter, a 44-year-old mother who converted to Orthodox Judaism before her marriage to Jared Kushner, represents a direct Iranian-backed threat against a member of the First Family. The White House did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché at the Iraqi embassy in Washington and now president of the Future Foundation, told the Post that Al-Saadi's fixation on Ivanka Trump grew from a deeply personal motive. Soleimani, the powerful head of the IRGC's elite Quds Force, had served as a father figure to Al-Saadi after the death of his biological father, Iranian Brigadier General Ahmad Kazemi, in 2006.
Qanbar described what Al-Saadi told associates after the January 2020 drone strike in Baghdad that killed Soleimani:
"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 added that sources reported Al-Saadi possessed "a plan of Ivanka's house in Florida." A second source also confirmed the plot to the Post.
Al-Saadi went further on social media. He posted a picture on X showing a map of the Florida enclave where Ivanka and Kushner own a $24 million home. Alongside it, a threat 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."
That a suspected terrorist could openly post reconnaissance of a First Family member's home on a major social media platform and continue operating across multiple continents raises serious questions about intelligence coordination and platform enforcement.
The federal indictment paints Al-Saadi as far more than a man with a grudge and a social media account. The Justice Department charged him in connection with a string of violent acts targeting American and Jewish sites across Europe and North America.
Those attacks include 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. Federal prosecutors said he "planned, coordinated" and allegedly claimed responsibility for the bombing of a synagogue in Liège, Belgium, and the arson of a temple in Rotterdam in March, along with various other foiled attacks inside the United States tied to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
The Trump family has endured extraordinary threats in recent years. Ivanka has spoken publicly about the toll of watching her father survive an assassination attempt, along with other personal tragedies, a reminder that the dangers facing this family are not abstract.
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based New Lines Institute, offered the Post a rare window into 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 said she did not know whether Al-Saadi was among her captors, as she only saw them masked.
Tsurkov described Al-Saadi's relationships at the highest levels of Iran's military apparatus:
"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."
After Soleimani's death, Tsurkov told the Post, Al-Saadi maintained a close relationship with Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, Soleimani's successor, who continued to provide him with resources for his terror networks.
Qanbar told the Post that Al-Saadi grew up in Baghdad and was largely raised by his Iraqi mother, but was sent to Tehran to train with the IRGC. He later established a travel agency specializing in religious trips, a front, Qanbar alleged, that allowed him to move around the world and "connect with terror cells."
When Turkish authorities arrested Al-Saadi last week, he carried an Iraqi service passport, a special travel document issued to government employees and civil servants. Qanbar told the Post that this passport can only be obtained with the consent of the Iraqi Prime Minister.
That document gave Al-Saadi the ability to travel freely, pass through minimal or no security checks at Iraqi airports, and access VIP airport lounges. While the passport would not exempt him from screening at foreign airports, it made obtaining visas to countries where he allegedly planned attacks far easier. Al-Saadi was reportedly in transit to Russia when Turkish authorities intercepted him.
The question of how a man charged with 18 terror attacks obtained an Iraqi government-issued travel document, one requiring prime ministerial approval, deserves a direct answer from Baghdad. If the Iraqi government knowingly facilitated an IRGC operative's global movement, that implicates a supposed U.S. partner in enabling attacks on American and allied targets.
For an alleged high-ranking terror operative, Al-Saadi displayed a remarkable appetite for public attention. His social media accounts showed him posing at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, kayaking, and standing in front of a missile with his hand over his heart.
Federal court documents cited photos from Al-Saadi's Snapchat account showing him consulting with Soleimani at what appeared to be a military facility, poring over maps and equipment. In August 2020, seven months after the Soleimani strike, Al-Saadi posted an image on X of Soleimani and another military figure killed in the same drone strike, held aloft by a militant with an AK-47. His caption, per court documents: "I will leave social media and turn off all my phones until the American enemy is defeated...victory or martyrdom."
The blackout did not last. In a 2025 post he described as his "last tweet," Al-Saadi referred to Soleimani and other Iranian military leaders killed in U.S. strikes as "martyrs." He wrote, per court documents:
"I address you while in great shock and intense weakness, a feeling I have never experience in my life except once, at the martyrdom of...Qasem Soleimani."
Al-Saadi also allegedly targeted and threatened potential victims through Snapchat messages and social media posts, in many cases sending them a photograph of a pistol with a silencer, the Post reported.
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. A lawyer for Al-Saadi did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
The case raises open questions that federal prosecutors and intelligence officials will need to address. How long did U.S. agencies know about the threat to Ivanka Trump? What role did Turkish intelligence play in the arrest? And how did an operative with documented ties to the IRGC and Kata'ib Hizballah, a man who posted reconnaissance of a First Family home on a public platform, operate freely across multiple countries for years?
The 2020 strike that killed Soleimani was one of the most consequential national security decisions of the first Trump administration. Iran's regime promised retaliation. Six years later, federal prosecutors say that retaliation took the form of a global terror campaign directed, in part, at the president's own daughter.
When a foreign terror network targets a president's family by name, posts surveillance of their home online, and carries out attacks on three continents before anyone stops them, the system didn't work fast enough. It worked eventually. Americans should expect better than eventually.
