This was just some bullshit the CIA put out to screw Russia. They literally pulled this out of a hat. Later the story changed to “Iran paid bounties for US troops killed in Afghanistan.” You can always tell a fake story if it keeps changing all the time. Real events don’t take wild turns every other day with brand new facts. But these things do. If the first set of lies doesn’t work, they just go make up some new ones. See how the Nordstream sabotage story keeps changing? Same thing. That’s because it never happened like they said it did.
There was never any evidence for the Russian bounties on dead US troops in Afghanistan and none was ever presented. But everybody fell for it anyway. Liberal Democrats were especially susceptible to believing this crap. I know Kos at Daily Kos made a big deal about it and every dumbass liberal on that site believed it. It’s a real hive mind over there.