‘We need to kill Ivanka’: Who is Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi? Iraqi commander targeted President Trump’s daughter to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani

Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a senior member of the organization Kata’ib Hizballah and an operative of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was planning to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump’s first daughter, Ivanka Trump, in a plot to avenge the president for the killing of Iranian military chief Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. air strike in Iraq in 2020. The Iraqi national was recently taken into custody by the United States recently. He was accused of directing and urging others to attack U.S. interests, including by killing Americans, according to a United States Department of Justice (DOJ) news release.

Al-Saadi, 32, made a “pledge” to kill Ivanka Trump and even possessed a blueprint of her Florida home, The New York Post reported, citing sources. He was allegedly targeting Trump’s family in response to the killing of Soleimani. “After Qasem was killed, he [Al-Saadi] went around telling people, 'We need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house,'” Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché in the Iraqi embassy in Washington, told The Post.

“We heard that he had a plan of Ivanka’s house in Florida,” Qanbar added. Al-Saadi’s plot to kill Ivanka, which was also confirmed to The Post by a second source. In a post on social media platform X, Al-Saadi posted a picture of a map showing the enclave in Florida where Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner have a $24 million home. He shared the map alongside a threat written in Arabic.


“I say to the Americans, look at this picture and know that neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you. We are currently in the stage of surveillance and analysis. I told you, our revenge is a matter of time," It read as, loosely translated into English, according to the New York Post.

Al-Saadi was arrested in Turkey on May 15, 2026, and extradited to the US. According to the US DOJ release, he was charged by complaint with six counts of terrorism-related offenses for his activities as an operative of Kata’ib Hizballah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including his involvement in nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States.

What do we know about Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi?

Al-Saadi, 32, has been linked to attacks on U.S. and Jewish targets, including the firebombing of the Bank of New York Mellon in Amsterdam in March 2026, the stabbing of two Jewish individuals in London in April 2026, and a shooting at the U.S. consulate in Toronto that same month, according to the Department of Justice.

Authorities also allege that he “planned, coordinated,” and claimed responsibility for assaults against Jewish communities, such as the bombing of a synagogue in Liège, Belgium, and the arson of a temple in Rotterdam in March, along with several other thwarted plots in the United States tied to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

“His [Al-Saadi’s] relationship with Soleimani was obviously a big coup for the Iraqi militia groups he worked with,” said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based New Lines Institute who was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2023 and held hostage by Kata’ib Hezbollah for 903 days before her release in September 2025, according to The Post. She said she did not know if Al-Saadi was one of her kidnappers, as she only saw them masked.

Tsurkov told the news outlet that Al-Saadi maintained a close relationship with Soleimani’s replacement, Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, who continued to provide him with resources for his terror networks.