Begin with what is not in dispute.

In November 2024, federal prosecutors in New York unsealed charges alleging that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had tasked an operative named Farhad Shakeri with surveilling and assassinating President Donald Trump. The tasking, according to the complaint, came on Oct. 7, 2024 — the first anniversary of the Hamas massacre in Israel. Shakeri remains at large in Iran. A separate Revolutionary Guard operative, Asif Merchant, was convicted by a Brooklyn jury of a murder-for-hire plot that ran through recruited American criminals toward the same target. Neither case rests on a leak or an anonymous source. Both rest on indictments, sworn testimony, and a verdict.