US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken threatened Iran with "serious consequences" if it attacked Americans, after an Iranian agent was accused of plotting to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Adviser John Bolton, which Tehran considered "ridiculous."

"Our message is clear: We will not tolerate threats of violence against Americans, and this certainly includes former government officials," Blinken said in a tweet on Twitter today, Thursday. "Any attack will have serious consequences."

Our message to Iran is clear: we will not tolerate threats of violence against Americans — and that certainly includes former government officials.

Any attack would be met with severe consequences.

https://t.co/X6pmTtHZKF

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) August 11, 2022

On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice announced that it had charged a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Shahram Borsafi, who resides in Iran, with conspiring to assassinate Bolton.

And the Ministry of Justice said in a statement that "the investigations indicate that the plot to assassinate Bolton was most likely aimed at retaliation for an American air strike that killed a popular and powerful general in the country," the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in an American raid in early 2020.

The FBI publishes photos of the Iranian agent wanted for arrest (Reuters)

Iranian response

For his part, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a press statement, "We reserve the right to take measures under international law against the absurd US accusations."

He added that these US allegations are "unfounded, and have political goals and motives", considering that they are an attempt to escape the responsibility of bearing "terrorist crimes", such as the assassination of Soleimani and the Zionist crimes and support for the Islamic State, as he put it.

Kanaani pointed out that the US judiciary put forward some accusations without providing any necessary evidence or documents.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman "strongly" warned against any action against Iranian citizens, adding, "We reserve the right to take any action within the framework of international law to defend the rights of our government and our citizens."