A Pakistani man convicted on Friday of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump and other politicians told an FBI agent he thought Iran ‘was responsible’ for the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Asif Merchant, 47, told the FBI agent, Jacqueline Smith, that the incident ‘was the same thing he was sent here to do,’ Smith testified during Merchant’s trial. Merchant told jurors the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sent him on a ‘mission’ to kill U.S. politicians, including by telling him to attend a Republican rally.

Merchant was arrested July 12, 2024, one day prior to the shooting in Butler, where Thomas Crooks fired several shots into a rally crowd, killing one and grazing Trump’s ear. 

The FBI has said repeatedly that it found no evidence that Crooks had co-conspirators or that any foreign actors were involved in the incident.

Merchant, who was convicted by a jury of murder-for-hire and attempt to commit terrorism, testified that Trump was not his only target, telling jurors then-President Joe Biden and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley were also on his list. He claimed that he only took part in the plot because Iran’s IRGC warned it would target his family.

‘I had no other options,’ Merchant said. ‘My family was threatened.’

Merchant now faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. His sentence will be determined at a later hearing.

Merchant was arrested after he was recorded on camera outlining a plot on a napkin to kill a politician with a person who turned out to be an FBI informant. Federal prosecutors showed video during the trial of Merchant speaking to the informant. The prosecutors said Merchant also tried to hire two hit men and pay them $5,000, but the men turned out to be federal agents posing as assassins.

Smith, the FBI agent who met with Merchant after his arrest, said that Merchant never conveyed that he feared for his family. Merchant said he wanted to do intelligence work and be paid for it, Smith said.

The FBI agent also said Merchant was told by an Iranian handler to attend a Republican political rally to scope out security but that Merchant was worried about being identified, and so he watched the rally online instead.

Merchant’s defense team told jurors their client, who has two wives, was a family man and cared deeply about his faith and that he intentionally acted carelessly because he wanted to be caught.

In their closing arguments, defense lawyers said Merchant had his hand forced in the operation, thinking his family would be harmed if he did not cooperate. Additionally, the lawyers cited several instances where they said Merchant’s actions as an intelligence operator were little more than incompetent.

Fox News’ Danielle Cavaliere and Brendan McDonald contributed.

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Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger hit back at Secretary of War Pete Hegseth after the Pentagon announced it would cut ties and funding relationships with numerous collegiate institutions over what it described as woke ideologies.

A Pentagon leadership memo initialed ‘PBH’ — the secretary’s full name is Peter Brian Hegseth — sent just before the U.S. bombed Iran and entitled ‘Aligning senior service college opportunities with American values,’ laid out an examination of standing ‘Professional Military Education institutions, [the] bedrock upon which we build lethal warfighters grounded in the founding principles that underpin American

Spanberger fired back after it was reported that the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., would be affected. The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot covered her remarks at a high school in Hampton — about halfway between the two cities.

Spanberger said the move is an ‘outrageous attack at yet another point of pride in Virginia,’ as the memo said the Senior Service College programs there would be ended and that servicemembers would lose support.

 ‘The idea that the Pentagon would pull back from this fellowship program that has been long a fixture at William & Mary is just outrageous,’ she said, according to the paper.

The Pentagon memo said the department will ‘no longer invest in institutions that fail to sharpen our leaders’ warfighting capabilities or that undermine the very values they swore to defend,’ and that more than a dozen schools faced termination.

Spanberger, who formerly worked for the CIA, said the move speaks to the Defense Department’s ‘lack of understanding of the real strength of universities, whether it’s William & Mary or others, in educating the next generation of military leadership,’ according to the paper.

She also cited the fact William & Mary’s current chancellor is himself one of Hegseth’s predecessors.

Robert Gates was former President George H.W. Bush’s director of central intelligence and later served as Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, remaining in the role into former President Barack Obama’s term.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Pentagon for comment.

In a statement obtained by Hampton Roads’ CBS affiliate, the college administration said it was ‘puzzled and saddened’ by Hegseth’s move, saying that William & Mary is ‘among the country’s most military-friendly institutions’ and also embraces its ROTC program.

While the Williamsburg school may be on the chopping block, the affiliate reported that Regent University in Virginia Beach — founded by Christian evangelist Pat Robertson — may be considered one of the replacement institutions.

In the memo, Harvard, Washington University in St. Louis, MIT, Tufts, Georgetown, George Washington University, Princeton, Yale, Brown and Queen’s University in Canada were listed as schools facing separation.

Colleges being considered as replacements include Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., The Citadel, Virginia Tech, the University of North Carolina, Clemson University and Hillsdale College in Michigan.

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The stunning details revealed by Steve Witkoff on his talks with Iran and their boastful remarks about its nuclear program have seemingly fallen on deaf ears at the U.N. nuclear agency.

Days into the U.S.-Israel joint campaign against Iran, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi posted to X stating, ‘There has been no evidence of Iran building a nuclear bomb.’

Fox News Digital asked the IAEA how it could assess the development of a possible nuclear weapon without access to Iran’s facilities but received no response at press time.

Grossi’s post came as the U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff gave details to Fox News’ Sean Hannity earlier this week on his talks with the regime prior to the U.S. and Israel launching their military operation against Tehran.

Witkoff revealed the negotiators said they had an ‘inalienable right’ to enrich uranium. When Witkoff countered that the Trump administration had the ‘inalienable right to stop [them, ]’ he explained that the negotiators said this was only their starting point.

‘They have 10,000, roughly, kilograms of fissionable material that’s broken up into roughly 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, another 1,000 kilograms 20% enriched uranium,’ Witkoff explained. ‘They manufacture their own centrifuges to enrich this material, so there’s almost no stopping them. They have an endless supply of it. The 60% material can be brought to 90% – that’s weapon grade — in roughly one week, maybe 10 days at the outside. The 20% can be brought to weapons grade inside of three to four weeks.’

Witkoff added that during his first meeting with the negotiators, they said ‘with no shame that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of this negotiating stance.’

‘They were proud of it. They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs,’ Witkoff said.

Grossi, who is running to become the next United Nations secretary general, did however admit in his post on X that Iran maintains ‘a large stockpile of near-weapons grade enriched uranium’ and said that the Islamic Republic has not allowed inspectors full access to its program. With these facts in mind, he said that the IAEA ‘will not be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful’ until Iran ‘assists…in resolving the outstanding safeguards issues.’

Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, FDD, told Fox News Digital, No one paid much attention to Rafael Grossi throughout the Biden years when he repeatedly warned publicly that Iran was refusing to cooperate with and providing false statements to the IAEA about ongoing investigations into undeclared facilities, activists and nuclear material.’

The former Trump administration official said, ‘There are some key facts being ignored today. The IAEA board last year found Iran to be in breach of the NPT. To this day, Grossi has confirmed that the IAEA cannot verify the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful.’

He continued, ‘This is not Iraq where we lacked hard public evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Iran had built out nearly every part of its nuclear weapons program in plain sight, with the weaponization work moving forward at undeclared sites controlled by SPND. If the administration had evidence the regime was moving quickly to reconstitute key elements of that program — from advanced centrifuge manufacturing to completion of a new underground enrichment site alongside advancement of delivery vehicle programs – the president was fully justified in enforcing a red line he set after Operation Midnight Hammer.’

Spencer Faragasso, a senior fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), told Fox News Digital that his organization calculated prior to the June 2025 12 Day War that Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms of 60% rich uranium. With about 24 or 25 kilograms of 90% rich uranium required per weapon, Faragasso said the country possessed the ability to produce 11 weapons in one month.

Faragasso said that there remain questions about whether the Iranians can access their enriched materials, and whether they possess additional centrifuges that may have not been installed in the facilities that were struck.

‘Being able to enrich the uranium up to weapon grade is actually a tall order,’ he said, explaining that it would require a new enrichment site and components and materials that ‘Iran would either need to recover from its destroyed facilities’ or ‘illicitly import them from abroad.’ With a few hundred centrifuges, enough for two or three cascades, Faragasso said the Iranians could have enriched their uranium stores to weapon grade.

‘To be clear, the successes gained from the June war are not permanent and officials from the regime spoke publicly about how they wanted to reconstitute their enrichment program, their nuclear program,’ he said. ‘The more time that goes on, the worse the situation will get. It’s not going to get better, especially regarding the ballistic missile program.’

He said the Iranians had previously expressed the desire to open a fourth enrichment site, which the IAEA stated was at Esfahan. According to Faragasso, there was ‘never confirmation’ of where the site was or how far along construction may have been.

The group is now tracking an Israeli strike on March 3 on Min-Zadayi, a site that Faragasso said ‘was completely unknown’ to them previously. The Israel Defense Forces reported on X that the site was ‘used by a group of nuclear scientists who operated to develop a key component for nuclear weapons.’ 

The State Department referred Fox News Digital to remarks made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the press on Tuesday on Iran’s nuclear program. 

‘This terroristic, radical, cleric-led regime cannot be ever allowed to have nuclear weapons.’ Explaining that the Islamic Republic was ‘willing to slaughter their own people in the streets,’ Rubio directed members of the press to ‘imagine what they would do to us. Imagine what they would do to others. Under President Trump that will never, ever happen,’ he said.

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When War Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked recently whether U.S. forces would ever move to secure enriched uranium reportedly stored at Iran’s Isfahan nuclear complex, he declined to say, citing operational security.

The exchange highlighted a question the U.S. and Israel’s air campaign alone cannot answer: even if U.S. strikes degrade Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, who would physically secure the enriched uranium, and how?

Iran is believed to possess a significant stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%, near weapons-grade. That material could theoretically be used in multiple nuclear devices if further refined. 

Moving from 60% to weapons-grade 90% enrichment requires additional processing, and weaponization would involve further technical steps. But analysts say the more immediate issue is physical control of the material itself.

‘If the U.S. wants to secure Iran’s nuclear materials, it’s going to require a massive ground operation,’ Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, told Fox News Digital.

Davenport said the highly enriched uranium believed to be stored at Isfahan appears to be deeply buried and contained in relatively mobile canisters. Securing it would likely require locating the full stockpile, accessing underground facilities and safely extracting or downblending the material.

‘It’s not even clear the United States knows where all of the uranium is,’ she said, noting that the mobility of storage containers raises the possibility that some material could be moved or dispersed.

The administration repeatedly has said preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon remains a central objective of Operation Epic Fury.

‘Ultimately, this issue of Iran’s nuclear pursuit and their unwillingness through negotiations to stop it is something President Trump has said for a long time needs to be dealt with,’ Hegseth said.

Senior administration officials have argued that Iran sought to build up its ballistic missile arsenal in part to create a deterrent shield — enabling Iran to continue advancing its nuclear program while discouraging outside intervention.

So far, however, the bulk of U.S. strikes have focused on degrading missile launchers, air defenses and other conventional military targets.

Experts note that dismantling missile systems may reduce Iran’s ability to shield a potential nuclear breakout. But physically controlling enriched uranium itself presents a separate and more complex challenge.

Airstrikes versus physical control

Defense officials have acknowledged that degrading nuclear infrastructure from the air is different from safely managing or securing nuclear material. 

Airstrikes can destroy centrifuges, power systems and support buildings. But enriched uranium stored underground may remain intact unless it is physically secured, removed or verifiably downblended.

Striking or extracting nuclear material also carries safety risks that military planners must weigh. 

If storage casks containing uranium hexafluoride gas were compromised, the material could pose chemical toxicity risks to personnel entering the site without proper protective equipment. Analysts say a conventional strike is unlikely to trigger a nuclear detonation, but dispersal of material could create localized hazards and complicate recovery efforts.

Chuck DeVore, a former Reagan-era defense official who worked on nuclear issues, argued that directly targeting the stockpile may not be a priority under current battlefield conditions.

‘You don’t want to release the material into the surrounding areas and cause radioactive contamination,’ DeVore said, adding that deeply buried facilities are difficult to reach from the air. 

DeVore also downplayed the immediacy of a breakout scenario, arguing that further enrichment, weaponization and delivery would be difficult to execute undetected amid sustained U.S. air operations.

Even if Iran were able to further enrich uranium, he said, assembling a deliverable weapon under active military pressure would present significant technical and operational hurdles.

Still, DeVore acknowledged that long-term control of the uranium would ultimately require a political resolution inside Iran and some form of outside oversight.

What would securing it require?

Nonproliferation experts say securing enriched uranium generally involves more than military force. It requires verified accounting of the material, sustained access to storage sites and either removal or downblending to lower enrichment levels suitable for civilian use.

Davenport said internationally monitored downblending would be the safest option if political conditions allow.

‘The IAEA remains the best place to go back into Iran to monitor the sites, to try to track down and account for the enriched uranium,’ she said, describing downblending as a relatively straightforward technical process compared to attempting to extract and transport highly enriched material in a contested environment.

Both pathways — physical seizure or internationally monitored reduction — depend on conditions that do not currently exist.

Administration officials argue that dismantling Iran’s missile network weakens Iran’s ability to shield a nuclear breakout and reduces the immediate threat to U.S. forces and regional allies.

But suppressing missiles and controlling enriched uranium are separate challenges.

Destroying infrastructure can slow or disrupt a program. Physically locating, accounting for and securing nuclear material requires sustained access, reliable intelligence and — ultimately — political conditions that allow it.

For now, the administration maintains that Iran will not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. How the enriched uranium itself would be secured remains a question without a public answer.

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President Donald Trump said Friday that during a meeting with defense executives they had agreed to increase production of what he called ‘exquisite class’ weapons by four times as his administration looks to accelerate weapons production while military operations against Iran continue.

‘Expansion began three months prior to the meeting, and Plants and Production of many of these Weapons are already under way,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social after the meeting. 

‘We have a virtually unlimited supply of Medium and Upper Medium Grade Munitions, which we are using, as an example, in Iran, and recently used in Venezuela,’ he said. ‘Regardless, however, we have also increased Orders at these levels.’

Trump said the meeting concluded with executives agreeing to come back to the White House in two months. 

The White House emphasized the session was scheduled weeks ago and was not convened in response to immediate battlefield shortages. Officials described the meeting as part of a broader effort to strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base and speed production of American-made weapons.

Companies in attendance Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX Corporation, Boeing, Honeywell, BAE Systems and L3Harris Technologies. 

The meeting comes as U.S. forces remain engaged in Operation Epic Fury, a campaign targeting Iranian military assets following coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes. Administration officials have maintained that U.S. readiness remains strong, even as the pace of missile defense operations has drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

During the 2025 12-day Iran conflict, U.S. forces fired more than 150 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors — roughly a quarter of the global inventory — to shield Israel and U.S. assets from Iranian missile attacks, according to defense assessments. Patriot PAC-3 MSE missiles are currently produced at a rate of roughly 600 to 650 annually, with replenishment timelines measured in months or years rather than weeks.

U.S. and Israeli officials previously estimated that Iran had a large ballistic missile arsenal — roughly 2,000 to 3,000 missiles of various types at the outset of the conflict. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper said Thursday Iran’s missile attacks have decreased 90% since the start of the conflict.

Defense planners have described missile defense inventories as part of a broader strategic balancing act. The same high-end systems used to protect U.S. bases and partners in the Middle East are also supplied to Ukraine and positioned in the Indo-Pacific, creating what some analysts characterize as a ‘zero-sum’ competition for inventory across theaters.

Lawmakers emerging from recent classified briefings have raised questions about sustainability if operations expand. 

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., warned the campaign could become a ‘math problem,’ balancing incoming missile volumes against finite interceptor supplies and production capacity. 

Other members, including Republicans briefed on the operation, have said officials assured Congress U.S. forces remain in strong shape.

Current and former defense officials have drawn a distinction between offensive strike weapons — which can often be surged from prepositioned stocks — and defensive interceptors such as Patriot and THAAD systems, which require longer production timelines and cannot be rapidly manufactured at scale.

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