Iranian politician offers ‘$3m to whoever kills Trump’
An Iranian politician is reportedly offering a $3m “award” for “whoever kills Trump”.
According to ISNA, Iran’s semi-official news agency, Ahmad Hamzeh said: “On behalf of people of Kerman province, we will pay $3m award in cash to whoever kills Trump.”
Kerman is the hometown of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike on 3 January in Iraq.
Hamzeh did not elaborate on whether it was a decision made by clerical rulers to threaten Donald Trump, who is currently in Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Another Iranian representative has been reported as saying the country would be protected from threats if it had nuclear weapons.
The US disarmament ambassador, Robert Wood, dismissed the threat as “ridiculous”.
He said: “It’s just ridiculous but it gives you a sense of the terrorist underpinnings of that regime and that regime needs to
change its behaviour.”
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The comments about the US President from Hamzeh come as Iran acknowledged its armed forces fired two Russian anti-aircraft missiles at the Ukrainian jet which crashed, killing 176 people.
A preliminary report by Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation did not blame missiles for the crash of the Boeing 737-800.
Iran initially denied it had fired missiles, but the US and Canada said it was due to anti-aircraft fire from the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
The new report says the missiles fired at the aircraft came from the TOR-M1.
In 2017, Iran received a delivery of 29 TOR-M1 units from Russia in a contract worth an estimated $700m, (£538m).
But the report said: “The impact of these missiles on the accident and the analysis of this action is under investigation.”
Surveillance footage showed two missiles fired at the plane.
Iran had indicated the black box recorders from the plane would be sent abroad for investigation but then backtracked and said it would look at them internally.
However they have now had to ask for help in probing the recorders, and have requested equipment to download the information from the US and France.
Canada has said the boxes should be examined in France. Of the 176 victims, 57 were from Canada.
Over the weekend, the bodies of 11 Ukrainian victims were repatriated with a ceremony at the airport in Kiev.
