FBI Informant/Leaker Sues Iran For $5 Million Because It Has Allegedly Tried To Kill Him Multiple Times

I don’t know why I’m drawn to doomed litigation but there’s no denying this impulse.

I know what the plaintiff wants to achieve. That much is made clear by Justin Rodrich’s reporting on the lawsuit for the Daily Beast. But I don’t know how he (or any other pronoun! — it’s filed as “Doe”) expects this to stop a rogue state from trying to kill them, much less put $5 million in his pockets.

Nonetheless, here we are:

An FBI informant who leaked sensitive government secrets that reportedly then led to a deadly U.S. drone strike claims Iran’s fearsome security apparatus has targeted him for assassination over the perceived betrayal, forcing him underground, in an undisclosed location, following a botched kidnapping attempt.

In a heavily anonymized federal lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast, “John Doe” says Iranian agents torched his car, broke into his home, and threatened his relatives after learning he was working with the American government. He now lives “in constant fear” of being killed by Iranian agents who have carried out dozens of hits and hundreds of abductions in various countries “with impunity,” according to his complaint.

Because Doe is a marked man, he went into exile in a nearby nation where he “must now avoid any public interaction, in order to remain safe,” the complaint states.

Unlike a lot of other fatally flawed (perhaps a poor choice of words in this case) litigation I’ve covered, Doe has a legitimate beef: a foreign nation is trying to kill him on, perhaps on his own soil — soil, it must be noted, that does not belong to the nation of Iran.

As legitimate claims go, demanding to be compensated for living in constant fear of your own safety is a pretty good one.

But the beef aside, how does the plaintiff expect this to actually go? For one thing, the federal court must agree that Washington, DC is the proper venue to hear this case. It may decide that it is, but in doing so, may provide a few hints for Doe’s assassins as to their general location.

The plaintiff has also secured legal representation. If you’re a state-sponsored hacker, that’s where you’re going first if you’re trying to discover the location of a person you want to kill.

And, since Iran has allegedly already engaged in intimidation, attempted kidnapping, and other threats on the informant’s life abroad, it’s unlikely the country is going to suddenly develop a healthy respect for US civil litigation procedures and respond to this lawsuit in a timely fashion… or at all, actually.

Iran has already broken the gentlemen’s agreement over assassination in foreign countries that you’re not actually at war with. Given that, the threat of default judgment isn’t actually a threat. It’s just one more thing you can file in your “IDGAF” drawer.

Even if the Iranian government does respond to this lawsuit, one would expect the invocation of sovereign immunity. One would also hope that a US Court would refuse to rule that sovereign immunity covers extrajudicial assassinations by countries not currently engaged in declared wars on said target and said target’s nation.

One would hope. But then again, maybe it won’t!. I mean, that’s exactly the thing that’s central to the initiation of Iran’s (alleged) assassination attempts:

An FBI informant who leaked sensitive government secrets that reportedly then led to a deadly U.S. drone strike claims Iran’s fearsome security apparatus has targeted him for assassination over the perceived betrayal…

We’re not technically or legally at war with Iran. And yet! So, that kind of ruins that argument. This government is only at war with things at the moment. There’s the War on Drugs. The War on Terror. The War on Fentanyl. The War on [Political Hot Button Topic Du Jour]. But we’re not at war with Iran. Nor are we at war with Yemeni wedding parties or foreign journalists, but nonetheless we’ve killed both with extrajudicial military actions and/or drone strikes.

While that adds more legitimacy to the plaintiff’s arguments and, conversely, detracts from the imagined defenses of the Iranian government, the lawsuit [PDF] doesn’t have a chance in hell of (1) stopping Iran from trying to kill this person, and (2) resulting in a $5 million payout to cover the alleged damages suffered due to the threatened person having to shut down his businesses.

So, as tragic and awful as the plaintiff’s situation is, this lawsuit only has the potential to make things worse. All of this means nothing when you’re dealing with a government willing to violate any number of official and unofficial agreements to kill someone on foreign soil. And that appears to be something Iran’s government is especially willing to do:

All told, Doe contends, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which in recent years has declared war on, among others, a podcaster in Vancouver who discussed sex on the air and a journalist in Brooklyn who criticized the regime, has “intentionally inflicted emotional distress, induced severe mental anguish and emotional and psychological pain and suffering, and caused the need for medical treatment.”

If there’s any entity in the US with some legal culpability, it might be the FBI, which clearly hasn’t done its best to protect this informant. Then again, it might just be the informant’s limited OpSec ability, which allegedly resulted in him being “followed” by Iranian agents and photographed entering the “US facility” where he turned over information to their handlers.

This is all very awful and hopefully the publications of these allegations, as well as the resulting lawsuit, will prompt the US government to do what it can to protect its source and adjust its diplomatic relationship with the Iranian government. But suing Iran isn’t going to stop it from trying to kill people it wants dead. And it certainly isn’t going to be offering any settlements to foreign residents who have, so far, managed to avoid being assassinated.