This means, among other things, that the tapes do not include an account of how the plot was first initiated and how it evolved from the kidnapping plot, which Arbabsiar said in his confession that he was he first instructed to set up, to an assassination. Who first raised the idea of using explosives in the assassination? Arbabsiar is charged with intent to use weapons of mass destruction — in this case, the bombing. But with these key conversations never recorded, it’s difficult or impossible to prove who first suggested the most damning details that legally turned a kidnapping plot into a terrorism plot.

Wheeler also wonders why Arbabsiar cooperated so quickly and willingly with the authorities. The evidence might be in the original complaint in the case, writes Wheeler, but it remains sealed.

But we don’t yet understand why a man arrested — purportedly for an assassination attempt — waived his right to a lawyer and within hours started to give the government all the evidence it needed to fill in any gaps in their case. His cooperation is all the more curious given that four of the five charges against him (the fifth is using interstate commerce to arrange a murder for hire) are conspiracy charges that probably couldn’t have been charged before Arbabsiar implicated Shakuri. The government surely could have charged him with other things, such as wire fraud, without the conspiracy charges. So why would Arbabsiar provide the evidence for four new charges against him that could put himself in prison for life?

One document that might explain Arbabsiar’s motives for cooperating is the original complaint in this case. The document that’s been publicly released is actually an amended complaint written 12 days after his arrest, presumably written to incorporate Shakuri in the charges based on Arbabsiar’s cooperation. But in a rather unusual move, the first complaint against Arbabsiar remains sealed — meaning we don’t know when the government first charged him or for what — with the approval of the Chief Judge in Manhattan, possibly in an entirely different docket (the amended complaint is entry number 1 in this docket). Thus, it is possible that Arbabsiar was originally charged for a completely unrelated crime — perhaps the opium deal. And it is possible Arbabsiar was charged much earlier than his arrest on September 29. As a result, we don’t know what kind of incentives the government might have offered Arbabsiar for his testimony.

Read more.

Key neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks who championed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq are calling for military strikes against Iran in retaliation for its purported murder-for-hire plot against the Saudi ambassador here.

Leading the charge is the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the ideological successor to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which played a critical role in mobilising support for “regime change” in Iraq in the late 1990s and subsequently spearheaded the public campaign to invade the country after the 9/11 attacks. The group sent reporters appeals by two of its leaders for military action on its letterhead Monday.

In a column headlined “Speak Softly …And Fight Back” in this week’s Weekly Standard, chief editor William Kristol, co-founder of both PNAC and FPI, said the alleged plot amounted to “an engraved invitation” by Tehran to use force against it.

“We can strike at the Iranian Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), and weaken them. And we can hit the regime’s nuclear weapons program, and set it back,” he wrote, adding that Congress should approve a resolution authorising the use of force against Iranian entities deemed responsible for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, acts of terrorism, or “the regime’s nuclear weapons program”.

Kristol’s advice was seconded by Jamie Fly, FPI’s executive director, who called for President Barack Obama to emulate former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when they ordered targeted strikes against Libya in 1986 and Iraq in 1993, respectively, in retaliation for alleged terrorist plots against U.S. targets.

Read more.

I won’t bother going over her recommendations and rebutting them, because so many have already done it for me:

Matt Duss at the Wonk Room, whose entire post is a definite must-read:

What’s Farsi for ‘Cakewalk’?

…Maybe there are Iranian democrats who support the U.S. bombing their country, I’d love to hear from them. But I think we’ve gotten far too casual about proposing these sorts of attacks. If we’re going to talk about it, let’s at least talk about it seriously, recognizing that very many people will very likely die. They deserve a lot better than than you know, if everything goes just right, it just might work!

Justin Elliott at Salon:

Rubin wants the United States to make human rights a central theme in its Iran policy — and to indiscriminately assassinate civilian scientists.

…The “car accident” line in her post is a clear reference to the bombing of two scientists’ cars last month in Tehran. Here is a BBC account of those attacks, carried out by unknown men on motorbikes. One of the scientists was killed and one was wounded. Both of their wives were also reportedly wounded. Another nuclear scientist was killed in a similar bombing earlier this year.

No one has argued that any of these men could be considered combatants. It’s also still unclear who was behind the attacks, though Iran has accused the United States and Israel of having a role. But even the U.S. State Department referred to these attacks as acts of terrorism, which would make them antithetical to any serious concept of human rights.

At Mondoweiss, Philip Weiss picks up on this same inconsistency, but has a broader point about the Post:

The Washington Post has replaced the American Enterprise Institute as the primary hub of neoconservative arguments for U.S. aggression in the Middle East. AEI served  a Republican administration, and cannot perform that role for Democrats. So the Post is now doing the job, percolating militarist ideas for the Obama administration. Old wine in a new bottle. Jennifer Rubin is the latest hire, fresh from Commentary magazine, arguing for an attack on Iran…

Later on Weiss comes back to the issue, and points us to a Huffington Post piece by David Bromwich, who calls it “barbarous dialect”:

There was nothing like this in our popular commentary before 2003; but the callousness has grown more marked in the past year, and especially in the past six months. Why?

Bromwich focuses on President Barack Obama’s decision to assassinate a U.S. citizen who preaches violent extremism against the U.S., and the fact that even the president can joke about “drone strikes” — that is, shooting missiles down on villages from on high. Bromwich:

A joke (it has been said) is an epigram on the death of a feeling. By turning the killings he orders into an occasion for stand-up comedy, the new president marked the death of a feeling that had seemed to differentiate him from George W. Bush. A change in the mood of a people may occur like a slip of the tongue. A word becomes a phrase, the phrase a sentence, and when enough speakers fall into the barbarous dialect, we forget that we ever talked differently.

• The Wall Street Journal: Ronen Bergman, a military analyst for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, opines that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has barely been able to contain his satisfaction over WikiLeaks cables showing Arab leaders so afraid of Iran that “they even appear to be doing their best to persuade the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.” Bergman acknowledge that Arab leaders are not prepared to join forces with Israel against Iran because “the Palestinian problem has not been solved,” but comes up short of fully endorsing a “linkage” argument. “Unless the concerned states of the Middle East drastically change the way they collaborate (with the U.S. acting as mediator), the campaign to stop Iran from getting the bomb will be lost,” he concludes.

• The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin, the neoconservative Post blogger, writes that it’s “time to reset Iran policy.” Rubin says the current dual-track policy of pressure and engagement is failing on both fronts and dismisses the need to build international consensus on any matter related to Iran. She suggests robust support for the Green Movement, to ”continue and enhance espionage and sabotage of the Iranian nuclear program” (including assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists — the “ultimate targeted sanction”), making “human rights a central theme in our bilateral and multilateral diplomacy,” and “begin[ning] to make the case and agree on a feasible plan for the use of force.” She contends that an attack on Iran will not allow the current regime to consolidate power. In conclusion, Rubin writes: “The goal should be to do what we can to accelerate the regime’s collapse while we work to retard or force surrender of its nuclear program.”

• The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin, writing on the Post’s Right Turn blog, interviews Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Lieberman tells her that statements from EU and Russian officials indicating support for limited Iranian enrichment”‘is the wrong message’ to send to a regime that has ‘such a pattern of deceit.’” He argues that should Iran get a nuclear weapon, “the consequences are so disastrous for us and our allies” that “it’s time to get tough.”