TEHRAN — Iran has put out an arrest warrant and requested a red notice be published by Interpol for President Donald Trump following the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January, the Iranian state news agency FARS reported Monday.
Ali Alghasi Mehr, the prosecutor general of Tehran, said arrest warrants had been ordered for 36 people who were involved in or cooperated with the “terror” of Soleimani, including U.S. military and political officials, the news agency reported.
A judicial official has also "declared a red notice on Interpol," Mehr added, according to FARS.
The Department of State and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump is at the top of the list of those wanted, according to FARS. No other officials were immediately identified.
A red notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action. It is at the discretion of local law enforcement authorities whether to act on the notices.
When asked whether Iran had requested a red notice for Trump, among others, a spokesperson for Interpol said in an emailed statement that its constitution forbids it from undertaking "any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character."
The spokesperson did not say whether Interpol had received Iran's request.
The U.S. killing of Soleimani, the high-profile commander of Iran’s secretive Quds Force, on Jan. 2, brought simmering tensions between Tehran and Washington to a boiling point. Iran retaliated days later by firing more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi air bases housing U.S. forces.
In a statement announcing the death of Soleimani in January, the Department of Defense said that the U.S. military had taken "decisive defensive action" to protect U.S. personnel abroad.
"This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans," the Defense Department added. "The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world."
Trump withdrew the United States from a nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2018 and has imposed a wave of economic sanctions on the country's oil industry, as well as banking and other key sectors. The 2015 nuclear deal eased U.S. and United Nations sanctions on Iran in return for limits on Tehran's nuclear program.
