TheChek News Flow

Washington says militant group’s rejection of deal to release Israeli hostages meant its presence was no longer ‘viable’

Qatar has told the leaders of Hamas to leave the country following pressure from Washington, in a significant shift in policy by the Gulf state.

The request was made around 10 days ago after intense discussions with US officials, according to one person familiar with the matter.

The gas-rich state has hosted Hamas’s political office in its capital, Doha, since 2012, when Syria’s civil war forced it to leave its base in Damascus, and the US asked Qatar to open a channel of communication with the Palestinian group.

Doha became a crucial interlocutor in hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas following the militant group’s deadly attack on southern Israel in October 2023, in which it killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostage, according to Israeli officials.

Israel’s ensuing offensive in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian officials.  

More than 100 Israeli hostages were freed in a deal last year that Qatar helped broker. But the talks have since been deadlocked, and Doha was told that after the failure of “repeated proposals to release hostages, [Hamas’s] leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner”, said a senior Biden administration official.

“We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” the official said.

The official added that while Qatar had played a key role in trying to negotiate a ceasefire and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by the militant group over the past year, “following Hamas’s repeated refusal to release even a small number of hostages, including most recently during meetings in Cairo, their continued presence in Doha is no longer viable or acceptable”.

A person familiar with the matter said Hamas figures in Qatar would relocate to Turkey. The country has long harboured Hamas political operatives and since the start of the war in Gaza, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been vocal in his support for the group.

Turkey’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

In recent years, Qatar has poured millions of dollars into Gaza — which Hamas has governed since it seized control of the enclave in 2007 — to pay the salaries of civil servants and support struggling Palestinian families. 

The country’s image was tarnished by its relationship with Hamas after the October 7 attack. But its role as a mediator in ceasefire talks attracted international praise, and it successfully brokered the release last year of the more than 100 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails.  

But, frustrated by both sides’ intransigence in the talks to end the conflict in Gaza and criticism of Qatar by politicians in the US and elsewhere, Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said in April that Doha was re-evaluating its role as mediator. 

An Arab diplomat said Hamas officials had recently visited countries including Turkey, Iran, Algeria and Mauritania, and discussed the possibility of relocating.

“Qatar hosted Hamas leaders in the first place after they got a green light from the Americans. It’s logical to try to get rid of them when the US position changes,” the diplomat said.

Market was already preparing for a supply glut which could lower European natural gas prices

President-elect Donald Trump famously wants to make America great again. But at least one of his policy ideas has the potential to give European industry a leg up too.

Trump has vowed to encourage upstream production — to a “drill, baby, drill” refrain. He is also expected to lift a Joe Biden-era moratorium on licensing new liquefied natural gas export facilities.

These measures would have an incremental, rather than revolutionary impact. US natural gas production has risen to record levels of about 125bn cubic feet a day, up nearly half over the past decade. While rolling back royalties, compliance and costs might give drillers an extra incentive, the uplift would be capped by the downward pressure on oil and gas prices.

The “temporary pause” on new authorisations for LNG terminals, meanwhile, affected earlier-stage projects. A reversal would not have an immediate impact, although it undoubtedly strengthens the prospects for more LNG supply in the medium term. WoodMackenzie has estimated almost 90mn tonnes per annum (mtpa) of US projects were awaiting for export approval.

All of this matters because it comes in the context of an LNG market which is already preparing for a glut. Projects with 130 mtpa of capacity are scheduled to come on stream between 2025 and 2027 — equivalent to 33 per cent of existing LNG capacity, according to Bernstein analysis.

That is lower than estimated because projects suffer delays and complications. But it still far outstrips demand growth expected in the period. As this flood of supercooled fuel hits European shores, it is a fair bet it will drive prices down.

Market forces, then, are conspiring to bring cheaper gas to Europe, at least for some time. Geopolitics raises further questions. Trump’s campaign included a vow to bring Russia’s war with Ukraine to a speedy conclusion. The president-elect’s ability to do this remains questionable. It would have momentous implications, of which energy — given Russia’s huge gas reserves — is but one.

For the next year or so, the market will remain subject to bouts of volatility — particularly if Europeans were to experience a seasonal cold snap. LNG supply is still reasonably tight given delays and outages, but European gas demand remains well below pre-crisis levels. Looking beyond that, however, the supply is still coming — and in greater quantities.

For tariff-facing European industries, especially those in energy-intensive sectors such as chemicals and steelmaking, the prospect of a midterm decline in energy prices would come as some relief.

Pricier mortgages in recent years have a knock-on effect on property transactions

The UK housing market is struggling to regain momentum after a record low number of sales last year, as higher borrowing costs and political uncertainty keep the brakes on transactions. 

Forecasts show UK homes sales are on track to rise this year, but remain below the long-run pre-pandemic average of 1.2mn deals a year. Savills forecast 1.04mn sales in 2024, with Hamptons and Zoopla expecting 1.1mn. 

“The direction of mortgage rates has been key to buyer decisions over the past two years, and decreased monthly mortgage costs are now feeding through into improved confidence among prospective buyers,” said Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills. 

The Bank of England has begun to lower its benchmark interest rate from the 16-year high of 5.25 per cent, where it stayed for much of 2023. It cut rates to 4.75 per cent this week following a quarter-point reduction in August.

While mortgage costs have declined they have plateaued at about 4 per cent on fixed-rate deals for buyers — with some rates drifting higher in recent weeks. 

The number of home sales is an important sign of confidence in the housing market and wider economy, and influences how many new homes commercial housebuilders will bring to market at a time of severe supply shortages. 

Sales in more expensive markets such as London, the south-east and eastern England have fallen as much as 30 per cent, compared with the decade average before the pandemic. 

Relatively high interest rates in recent years have meant a slower rebound in sales, particularly since house prices have not fallen as sharply as many analysts predicted during the market downturn. 

House prices are still hovering around their 2022 peak in nominal terms, according to different gauges, having fallen about 10 per cent on an inflation-adjusted basis. Prices are forecast to end 2024 moderately higher, with Savills putting the probable gain at 3 per cent and Zoopla at 2 per cent. 

First-time buyers are forecast to make up the biggest cohort of buyers, at just over a third, according to Zoopla. Renters who can save a large enough deposit, or get money from family, are now often better off buying than renting given the record increases in rents. 

“The rapid growth in rents and the decline in mortgage rates have shifted the renting vs buying dynamics and supported more [first-time] purchases,” said Richard Donnell, Zoopla research director. Average mortgage costs for a typical UK first-time buyer home are 17 per cent cheaper than rent, Zoopla reported. 

Other potential buyers, who do not have strong reasons to move this year, have been put off by a series of big political events, including significant elections in the UK and US and last month’s UK Budget. With those events now out of the way, analysts say borrowing costs will be the key driver of how fast the market recovers. 

The number of mortgage approvals hit a two-year high in September, as more buyers prepared to jump into the market. 

The government’s decision to let temporary tax breaks on stamp duty expire in April could prompt some buyers to try to race through their transactions. Zoopla said there had been an uptick in inquiries for properties advertised as “chain free”, since they are typically quicker to buy. 

“The changes to stamp duty might provide a modest boost to transaction numbers in the first quarter of the year,” said Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons, especially for first-time buyers who could save up to £11,250. But she said there was not likely to be a “widespread rush”.

The stocks of power-plant owners have rocketed higher this year as dramatically as Nvidia —and even more so, in some cases. Shares of Constellation Energy

have doubled, while Vistra and Talen Energy have tripled. Artificial-intelligence computer programs demand extraordinary amounts of electricity, and tech companies are willing to pay up to secure it.

The stocks of power-plant owners have rocketed higher this year as dramatically as Nvidia—and even more so, in some cases. Shares of Constellation Energy

have doubled, while Vistra and Talen Energy have tripled. Artificial-intelligence computer programs demand extraordinary amounts of electricity, and tech companies are willing to pay up to secure it.

There may be limits to those gains, however—even in a Trump administration.

The bullish case for power stocks was premised, at least in part, on tech companies signing lucrative agreements to plug their data centers directly into power plants. The data centers would get dedicated electricity, and the power companies would get guaranteed payments at above-market rates. But on Nov. 1, federal regulators rejected the first of those deals, which Amazon.com had signed with Talen to plug a data center into a Pennsylvania nuclear reactor that Talen owns. (Nuclear power has been in particularly high demand because it’s considered reliable and clean.) In reaction, Talen and Vistra stocks fell 2% and 3%, respectively, and Constellation—the largest owner of nuclear plants in the country—fell 12%.

The ruling came from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which oversees the nation’s electricity grids. Nearby utilities had argued that Amazon was trying to siphon power away from the grid without helping to pay for the transmission network that keeps electricity flowing to regular consumers. One FERC commissioner wrote that Amazon’s plan “could have huge ramifications for both grid reliability and consumer costs.” Talen said FERC’s ruling was wrong and would stunt economic development. Amazon declined to comment.

The FERC decision is a sign that there’s a limit to how much power companies can benefit from special data-center deals.

Power and tech stocks have been rising together this year because of how much electricity the data centers will need. But the two industries won’t move in tandem forever because they serve different roles in society. Electricity is a public resource that needs to serve a wide range of customers, including elderly people on fixed incomes and struggling families. No one bats an eyelash if Nvidia charges Microsoft a high price for microchips. But if Grandma’s electricity bill skyrockets, regulators notice.

Electricity rates have already been heading higher. Average retail rates jumped 17% from 2021 to 2023, and are up again this year. Demand from electric vehicles, factories, and data centers is one reason for the rise. Analysts have projected that data-center power use could triple by 2030 and account for as much of 10% of total U.S. electricity demand.

Regulators, utilities—which maintain power grids—and consumer advocates are starting to look more closely at who benefits from electricity contracts, and who pays. The FERC ruling is just one example.

PJM, the nation’s largest electricity grid operator, recently delayed a power auction to address concerns raised in a complaint from the Sierra Club and consumer advocacy group Public Citizen that it is overpaying power companies like Talen, Vistra, and Constellation for reliable power. The last PJM auction resulted in projected payments that are nine times as high as current prices—which will invariably lead to higher consumer prices.

PJM says that the higher rates were necessary to encourage more power companies to build plants and increase electricity supply to meet surging demand. But if regulators find that the payments are too high, power companies could lose out and consumers could get rebates. And future auctions would probably be less lucrative for the power companies, too.

In addition, some utilities are demanding that tech companies pay more to access power for their data centers. American Electric Power Ohio said that it has gotten so many requests to power data centers that the region’s power demand is on track to double in a decade. Building out all of those transmission lines won’t be cheap, and AEP asked the tech companies to pay more. A settlement in that case is pending.

Eventually, regulators will have to determine who pays for all this electricity infrastructure. Some of those costs will be borne by the tech companies, some will be passed directly through to consumer bills, and some may have to be absorbed by the utilities. Power plant owners like Vistra, Constellation, and Talen that sell the electricity to utilities and corporations should still benefit, but their gains aren’t unlimited. The stocks already discount substantial earnings growth for years ahead. Constellation, for example, trades at 19 times its projected 2028 earnings.

The politics of electricity may only get more complicated from here. The two FERC commissioners who voted against the Amazon deal are Republicans, while the one dissenter is a Democrat. (Two other Democratic regulators recused themselves from the case for unexplained reasons.) While Republican-appointed regulators have a reputation for siding with corporate interests, that hasn’t always been the case in electricity markets, says Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a conservative Republican, has raised concerns about how the growth of data centers could affect Texas electricity consumers.

Electricity is a “hot political issue,” Slocum says. “Any policy that’s seen as exacerbating energy costs—because energy costs are inherently regressive—can become a flashpoint.”

He thinks new political alliances are forming and could affect companies. “There are very interesting stakeholder differences here,” he says. “This is unprecedented.”

ON Semiconductor has been hit by falling sales to auto makers and sluggish sales of its industrial chips. That’s about to change—and its earnings picture looks bright.

Chip stocks have been hot, but ON Semiconductor has not. That may be about to change.

The $31 billion Scottsdale, Ariz.–based chip maker hasn’t had an easy time lately. Its customers are mainly auto makers and manufacturers, which have been struggling even as demand for artificial-intelligence chips has increased. ON Semi stock has dropped 31% to $72 from its record high on July 28, 2023, while the S&P 500 index has gained 29% over the same period.

But ON’s moment may finally have arrived. Car makers could see a pickup in demand following a couple of years of lackluster sales. Demand should be helped by Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts, which provide a tailwind for economic growth, while Donald Trump’s election could provide a boost as well. ON Semi may not be Nvidia or even an AI play, but the stock now looks like a buy.

“ON Semi [is] a strong candidate for outperformance once demand rebounds,” writes Charter Equity Research analyst Jack Egan.

For ON, the problem starts with its semiconductors for cars, which make up a little more than half of its total revenue. Sales of auto chips fell to $907 million in the second quarter of this year, down 21% from a peak of $1.16 billion in the third quarter of last year. Following Covid-19 lockdowns, auto makers, fearing a shortage, rushed to buy semiconductors. Now they have too many, especially with car production stagnant, and companies like Ford Motor and General Motors are buying fewer chips, says Morningstar analyst William Kerwin. The weakness, combined with a sluggish market for industrial chips, pushed ON’s gross profit margins down to 45% from 47.3% in the third quarter of 2023, causing earnings to fall 31%.

The good news is that those pressures appear to be in the past—and they should stay there. The economic backdrop should get a boost from the Fed and other central banks cutting interest rates, while Trump’s victory could help the economy and the car business overall, though it could slow electric-vehicle sales, an important business for ON. But even that might be less of a worry than investors fear. “The world is going to come to EVs, and none of the car makers are abandoning EV plans,” says Piper Sandler analyst Harsh Kumar.

As auto makers see strengthening demand, they’ll order more chips to produce more vehicles. That could lead to year-over-year growth in the number of chips ON sells, and lift semi prices because it takes time for semiconductor makers to ramp up their supply. There are early signs of improvement. In the third quarter, ON Semi’s auto sales rose 4.9% to $951 million from that awful second quarter, while margins increased half a percentage point to 45.5%. That suggests that ON has gotten through the worst. “There is an element of chip ordering that’s like flipping a light switch,” says B. Riley Securities analyst Craig Ellis.

An auto recovery would go a long way toward fixing what ails ON, especially if the growth is matched with a rebound in other sectors. Its industrial revenue is expected to grow by 6% annually over the next three years as manufacturers increasingly use automation to make equipment, driving demand for more chips.

All told, analysts expect total revenue to grow by 10% to about $9 billion by 2027, a record that is achievable, given that there are only a few companies focused on the silicon-carbide auto chips ON sells. The company’s only larger competitor is STMicroelectronics, which generates just over $1 billion in silicon-carbide chip sales each year.

That sales growth should be matched with improvements in efficiency. Last year, ON purchased GlobalFoundries’ East Fishkill, N.Y., plant. This facility can produce more chips but at a similar cost to ON’s other plants, which will help drive costs down. Other costs—such as research and employee pay—are expected to rise more slowly than sales, as the company doesn’t need to go on a hiring binge. That should help it reach its target of 53% gross margins, which it reiterated on its third-quarter earnings presentation, though it didn’t specify for which year.

Management also has more than $1 billion in free cash flow, and it plans to use half of each quarter’s cash flow to repurchase shares. Together with its likely sales growth and improving profitability, analysts expect earnings per share to grow by 21% annually to $7.11 by 2027, according to FactSet, from $4.01 this year. Those estimates could be low if the auto business recovers more quickly than expected. “At this point, there’s more risk to the upside,” says Charter’s Egan.

Nor does the stock look expensive. It currently trades at 17 times 12-month forward earnings, well below the S&P 500’s 22 and the average chip stock’s 23.8. Even holding the multiple steady would bring the stock to about $112 by the end of 2026, for a 25% annualized gain from today.

That makes ON Semi stock one to jump on for long-term investors.

The corporate equivalent of blood in the streets is flowing at Volkswagen, Europe’s top auto maker and No. 2 globally. “Decades of structural problems” mean “costs in Germany must be massively reduced,” CEO Oliver Blume recently told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

He is demanding 10% across-the-board pay cuts and, smashing German taboo, the closure of three domestic factories.

That means time to buy, says Michael Field, European equity strategist at Morningstar. “If VW can get the factory closures signed off, it could have a V-shaped recovery,” he argues. He sees a whopping 65% upside in the stock, which has plunged nearly 40% over the past six months.

Field is also piling into VW’s compatriots, Mercedes-Benz Group, BMW, and Stellantis, which combines the old U.S. Chrysler with European stalwarts such as Fiat, Peugeot, and Citroën.

Not everyone is so bullish.

“On paper, all these stocks look incredibly cheap,” says Daniel Schwarz, head of Europe automotive research at Stifel Financial. “But no one knows what tomorrow will bring.”

The current backdrop has already brought the collapse of a business model based, at least for the German houses, on fat profit margins in a voraciously growing China.

Local competition has slashed Europeans’ share of the Chinese luxury car market to 40% from 90% before the pandemic, says Sasha Kachanova, a sector analyst for asset manager abrdn. And the market is shrinking due to China’s property-driven malaise.

Chinese upstarts like BYD have raced ahead of their European elders in affordable electric vehicles, pushing the European Union to slap import tariffs on them of up to 35%. “Europe developed demand for EVs, and the Chinese are coming in to fill it,” Field comments.

What’s looming next is the threat of U.S. tariffs from an incoming Trump administration. Europe exports twice as many autos to the U.S. as it imports from there, Field notes.

More certain is a tightening of European Union carbon-emissions standards in 2025, which are imposed on auto makers on a fleetwide basis. VW could face up to four billion euros ($4.3 billion) in fines based on its current lineup, Schwarz estimates.

The crunch from Brussels may accelerate Europe’s own EV efforts, though. New electric models in VW’s upscale Audi and Porsche families will roll out 15% cheaper next year thanks to an improved drive train platform, Schwarz says.

Peugeot and Citroën, meanwhile, tried to upstage the Chinese at last month’s Paris Auto Show with new compact EVs priced around €20,000.

“The Chinese have first-mover advantage in EVs, but that can quite easily be replicated,” Field says.

Abrdn’s Kachanova begs to differ. “European manufacturers need to create a whole new infrastructure for EVs,” she says. “Chinese competitors are close to the supply chain and can stay capital-light.”

Her house owns Mercedes stock nonetheless because…it’s Mercedes. “We still hold onto Mercedes because it’s a strong, premium brand,” Kachanova says.

There’s plenty of brand value left in Volkswagen cars, too, if Herr Blume can make them cheaper, Schwarz says. “The main problem is not the product, but the cost,” he says.

Blume is far from having a free hand. The Volkswagen Law of 1960 enshrined a 20% voting stake for the government of Lower Saxony state. Union board members could in theory veto plant closures.

Are the times desperate enough for him to force through his desperate measures anyway? Investors should watch closely.

CEO Elon Musk pulled off a windfall for the auto maker. Now the stock’s fundamentals need to catch up to its heady price.

Elon Musk created the perfect hedge for Tesla stock with his support of Donald Trump.

The president-elect isn’t a friend of electric vehicles. He has said they are a risk to the U.S. auto industry and promised to eliminate tax credits on EV purchases as well as emission “mandates” necessitating that auto makers build battery-powered cars. The potential impact was obvious to the market, which knocked Lucid Group stock down 5.3%, Polestar Automotive Holding down 8.2%, and Rivian Automotive down 8.3% on the day after the election. The moves seem appropriate, given that the changes probably mean lower U.S. sales for the EV start-ups.

Tesla was the exception. Its stock rose 14.8% on Wednesday and added $119 billion in market cap, more than any single stock except Nvidia, which is worth four times as much.

Such a rise was far from preordained. But by aligning himself closely with Trump after a failed assassination attempt in July and spending some $130 million to help get him elected, Musk greased the wheels. There is little reason to doubt the Tesla CEO’s sincerity. Still, Tesla would have lost $66 billion in market value if it had dropped 8% like Rivian, so its one-day swing works out to $185 billion in market value—exceeding the amount that Musk donated by more than 1,400 times. His net worth increased by some $25 billion the day after the election.

Clearly, the market is betting that Musk bought a great deal of protection for Tesla shares.

“Musk made a bet for the ages,” says Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who rates Tesla a Buy and has a $300 price target on the stock, up just 1% from Thursday’s close of $296.91.

Now the company’s fundamentals need to catch up with its share price.

As of Thursday’s close, Tesla’s stock trades at 93.8 times 12-month forward earnings, its highest since April 5, 2022, when EV deliveries were growing 40% year over year. Tesla deliveries aren’t expected to grow at all in 2024, although Musk believes that growth will return in 2025. It’s also well above its three-year average of 62.9.

It’s an expensive valuation. Barron’s estimates that Tesla’s car and energy-storage businesses are worth about $200 a share based on expected growth over the next decade. Paying more than that would require Tesla’s earnings to grow faster. Accelerating growth could come from better car sales. (Tesla is expected to launch a lower-priced model in early 2025.) Or it could come through new artificial-intelligence revenue. (Tesla plans to launch a fleet of AI-trained self-driving taxis in late 2025.)

Or it could be a bet on benefits arising from Musk’s relationship with Trump. In his victory speech, Trump singled out Musk for praise, calling out SpaceX’s midair rocket catch last month and crediting Starlink’s space-based Wi-Fi service for saving lives when North Carolina was hit by Hurricane Helene in late September.

“Let me tell you, we have a new star. A star is born—Elon,” Trump said. “[Musk is] a character, he’s a special guy, he’s a super-genius. We have to protect our geniuses—we don’t have that many of them.”

The two have even discussed a position for Musk in a second Trump administration, with Musk looking at ways to reduce government waste and inefficiency. In typical Musk fashion, he dubbed it the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Normally, investors might worry about Musk being stretched too thin. He runs multiple companies, after all, and apparently uses his downtime to become a top-ranked player of the videogame franchise Diablo.

Investors, though, appear to have gotten used to Musk’s multitasking—and they may be pricing in some upside to Musk’s involvement with Trump. With Trump in office, Musk and his car company are likely to receive less scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice, which are looking into Tesla’s driver-assistance technology and other issues. If Musk is put in charge of reducing government spending, he could target the National Labor Relations Board, which would take some power from labor unions, even if none represent Tesla’s U.S. employees.

But it’s more likely that investors are starting to price in better fundamentals. While the elimination of EV tax credits would harm the industry as a whole, Wedbush’s Ives believes that Tesla has the scale to be profitable without tax credits—as it has in the past. Fewer government incentives also mean less competition from traditional auto makers, leading to a larger market share for Tesla. In all, those changes could be worth $40 to $50 of value per share, Ives says.

BofA Securities analyst John Murphy is even more bullish. Tesla should be “indifferent” to new EV policies from a second Trump administration, he writes, and could benefit from fewer regulations dealing with self-driving cars. On Thursday, he raised his target price by $85, to $350 a share, the highest among major brokers tracked by FactSet. Murphy’s target values Tesla at about $1.1 trillion, or 106 times consensus 2025 earnings estimates aggregated by FactSet.

That target may prove to be too pessimistic. Tesla’s recent gains sent the stock above recent resistance—a term used by technical stock market analysts who look at stock charts to get a sense of levels where investors have bought and sold stocks in the recent past. It now has a “bullish chart pattern,” says CappThesis founder Frank Cappelleri. If shares can stay above $270 in the coming days, he thinks $400 could be in play in the coming months, up 35% from Thursday’s close and near its record high.

Maybe investors have gotten ahead of themselves, but it’s also possible that the market is sniffing something out. Either way, earnings growth has to accelerate for Tesla stock to maintain recent momentum into 2025 and beyond—no matter who is in the White House.

Iranian Agents Plotted to Kill Donald Trump, Justice Department Says

Failed plot highlights attempts to target U.S. officials

Iranian agents plotted to assassinate Donald Trump before he was re-elected as president, the Justice Department revealed Friday in a case that underscores the barrage of security threats Trump faces even before he takes office.

An Iranian operative told law enforcement that an official in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard directed him in September to set aside his other duties and assemble a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said in court papers.

The operative, identified as Farhad Shakeri, warned the official that crafting such a plan would cost a huge amount of money. In response, the official said, “we have already spent a lot of money…money’s not an issue.” The official in October told Shakeri if he couldn’t pull together a plan within seven days, they would put the assassination plot on hold until after the election, believing Trump would lose and it would be easier to kill him then, the complaint says.

The failed plot, revealed just days after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, highlights what officials have described as ongoing attempts by Iran to target Trump, a top enemy of the regime. Federal prosecutors in August charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran with plotting to kill Trump, prompting officials to bolster his security while on the campaign trail. And in September, the Justice Department charged three Iranian operatives with trying to hack Trump’s campaign in an effort to undermine his election prospects.

Officials have long warned about Iran’s efforts to retaliate for the January 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force, the group responsible for Iran’s covert military operations abroad. Trump ordered the strike, which occurred in Baghdad, while he was in the White House. U.S. ties with Iran are expected to be even more strained during his second term, as Trump plans to increase sanctions as part of an aggressive strategy to undercut Tehran’s support of violent Mideast proxies and its nuclear program, the Journal reported.

Officials have been concerned in recent months that Iran appears to be escalating its attempts to commit violence against government officials, dissidents and political figures on U.S. soil.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

The newly unsealed complaint also says authorities disrupted another plot to kill Masih Alinejad, an activist and writer living in Brooklyn who has been vocally critical of Iran’s human-rights abuses, discrimination against women and use of imprisonment and torture against political opponents. She has been the target of several assassination plots thwarted by U.S. authorities.

Iran “has been conspiring with criminals and hit men to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil, and that simply won’t be tolerated,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray said.

Shakeri, 51, and two others—Carlisle “Pop” Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island—were charged in what prosecutors described as a network of criminal associates tasked by Iran to further assassination plots on targets including Trump. The three were each charged with murder-for-hire and other related crimes. Court records don’t indicate who is representing the three.

Rivera and Loadholt were arrested and appeared in federal court Thursday; Shakeri remains at large in Iran. An Afghan national, he immigrated to the U.S. as a child and was deported around 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for robbery.

Prosecutors said Shakeri had recently recruited Rivera and Loadholt, whom he met in prison, to help participate in assassinations against other targets.

Investigators learned of the plot against Trump in a series of voluntary telephone interviews with Shakeri between late September and early November, according to court papers. Shakeri said he was in Tehran, and agreed to be interviewed in an effort to get a reduced sentence for another federal defendant serving time in the U.S. He spoke to agents on the phone at least five times, the document said.

He told agents in one of the conversations he didn’t intend to propose a plan to kill Trump within Iran’s tight time frame, according to the complaint.