The United States on Friday charged an Iranian in connection with an alleged plot ordered by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, the Justice Department said.

Farhad Shakeri informed authorities “that on October 7, 2024, he was tasked with providing a plan to kill” Trump, the department said in a statement. He said Shakeri told authorities that he had no intention of formulating such a plan within the deadline indicated by the IRGC.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said in a statement carried by Iranian media on Saturday that the claim was a “repulsive” plot by Israel and the Iranian opposition outside the country to “complicate matters between the United States and Iran”.

The Justice Department described Shakeri, 51, as a Revolutionary Guard asset residing in Tehran. He said he immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported around 2008 after a robbery conviction. Shakeri is a fugitive and believed to be in Iran, prosecutors said.

Two New York residents Shakeri had met in prison, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, were also charged with helping Shakeri plot the murder of an Iranian-American citizen in New York, described as an outspoken critic of the U.S. government. Iran that had previously been targeted for assassination.

Prosecutors did not identify the target, but he matched the description of Masih Alinejad, a journalist and activist who has criticized Iran’s veil laws for women. Four Iranians were charged in 2021 in connection with a plot to kidnap her, and in 2022 a man was arrested with a rifle outside her home.

Rivera and Loadholt were ordered detained pending trial. His attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.