TEHRAN— On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice released a ridiculous statement claiming that Iran was plotting to “eliminate” John Bolton, the former White House national security advisor.

“An Iranian national and member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was charged by complaint, unsealed today in the District of Columbia, with use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and with providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot,” the statement by the Department of Justice read.

The mythological statement went on to note that according to court documents, beginning in October 2021, Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezaei, 45, from Tehran “attempted to arrange the murder of former National Security Advisor John Bolton, likely in retaliation for the January 2020 death of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force (IRGC-QF) commander Qasem Soleimani. Poursafi, working on behalf of the IRGC-QF, attempted to pay individuals in the United States $300,000 to carry out the murder in Washington, D.C. or Maryland.”

The allegations were so far-fetched that Iran did not even bother to react more than a tweet. The Iranian Foreign Ministry's spokesman warned that the United States' constant propaganda and media frenzy will turn it into a true pariah state.

Nasser Kanaani made the remarks in Farsi, Arabic, and English on Friday.

He called the U.S. fabrications on a bankrupt political element, infamous terrorist, and coup plotter against sovereign countries and governments as a “forward escape” in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for a worldwide crime.

If the U.S. continues to promote the media hype, the country will become a true pariah in the eyes of Iranians and others throughout the world, he added.

U.S. propaganda tactics have long been out of date. Using fabrications and myths to portray a positive image of themselves in the global community or to defend their activities is an outdated tradition that must be abandoned.

In 2002, George W. Bush used a similar tactic against Iraq. Bush stated in October 2002 that Saddam Hussein has a "massive stockpile" of bioweapons. However, as CIA Director George Tenet stated in early 2004, the CIA had "no particular knowledge on the types or quantities of WMD agents or stocks at Baghdad's disposal." The phrase "huge stockpile" was completely made up. They eventually admitted that their allegation was a brazen lie.

Years later in 2019, Ari Fleischer, the White House Press Secretary at the time, said the slogan sung by the Left “Bush lied, people died” is itself a lie, but fact checkers say something else.

Fleischer’s deputy at the time, Scott McClellan, put it this way in his own memoir, “What Happened”.

“In the fall of 2002, Bush and his White House were engaging in a carefully orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval to our advantage. … Our lack of candor and honesty in making the case for war would later provoke a partisan response from our opponents that, in its own way, further distorted and obscured a more nuanced reality,” he wrote.

However, standing by his claims, Fleischer said, “The allegation that ‘Bush lied. People died’ is a liberal myth created to politically target President Bush.”

The same goes for the gibberish “Iran wants to kill me” John Bolton story. It may serve well for a children’s book helping parents to put them into bed, but it won’t justify the U.S. administration spending millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money to protect Bolton, Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, and Mark Esper, the former Secretary of Defense.