Hasan Izadi, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official in Iran, planned to assassinate Einat Kranz Neiger, the Israeli ambassador to Mexico, starting in late 2024 and kept the plot going actively through the first half of 2025, according to a U.S. official and the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The official in the Quds Force, which resembles the CIA, previously worked at the Iranian embassy in Venezuela, where he was second adviser. He used the alias Masood Rahnema.
The U.S. official said that Izadi targeted U.S. and Israeli officials and while he was in Venezuela, he communicated with Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy terror group in Lebanon.
“The plot was contained and does not pose a current threat,” said the U.S. official, who spoke anonymously. “This is just the latest in a long history of Iran’s global lethal targeting of diplomats, journalists, dissidents and anyone who disagrees with them.”
The revealed plot is “something that should deeply worry every country where there is an Iranian presence,” the official said.
The Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry told JNS that “we thank the security and law enforcement services in Mexico for thwarting a terrorist network directed by Iran that sought to attack Israel’s ambassador in Mexico.”
“The Israeli security and intelligence community will continue to work tirelessly, in full cooperation with security and intelligence agencies around the world, to thwart terrorist threats from Iran and its proxies against Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide,” the Israeli ministry said.
Izadi has traveled extensively in Latin America, where he operates a network of informants, JNS learned. While based in Caracas in 2021, Izadi and Hossein Kiani-Mordi, Iran’s military attaché, contacted dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to coordinate attacks throughout Latin America against senior U.S. and Israeli officials.
Izadi is seen shaking hands with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a photo which the Iranian embassy in Caracas posted on May 24, 2024.
Per an in-app, Instagram translation of the post, the embassy stated that Maduro “visited the residence of the Iranian embassy in Caracas to pay tribute to the martyr president Raisi and his companions,” referring to the late Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi.
Izadi worked with Majid Dastjani Farahani and Mohammad Mahdi Khanpour Ardestani, JNS learned. Both of the latter are Iranian intelligence officers on the FBI “most wanted” list, and both are thought to have attempted to recruit people in the United States in their plots against U.S. government officials.
