U.S. officials had learned from the DEA informant that Arbabsiar claimed that Shahlai was his cousin.
In September 2008, the Treasury Department designated Shahlai as an individual “providing financial, material and technical support for acts of violence that threaten the peace and stability of Iraq” and thus subject to specific financial sanctions. The announcement said Shahlai had provided “material support” to the Mahdi Army in 2006 and that he had “planned the Jan. 20, 2007 attack” by Mahdi Army “Special Groups” on U.S. troops at the Provincial Coordination Center in Karbala, Iraq.
Arbabsiar’s confession claims that Shahlai approached him in early spring 2011 and asked him to find “someone in the narcotics business” to kidnap the Saudi ambassador to the United States, according to the FBI account. Arbabsiar implicates Shahlai in providing him with thousands of dollars for his expenses.
But Arbabsiar’s charge against Shahlai was self-interested. Arbabsiar had become the cornerstone of the administration’s case against Shahlai in order to obtain leniency on charges against him.
There is no indication in the FBI account of the investigation that there is any independent evidence to support Arbabsiar’s claim of Shahlai’s involvement in a plan to kill the ambassador.
The Obama administration planted stories suggesting that Shahlai had a terrorist past, and that it was therefore credible that he could be part of an assassination plot.
Read more.
]]>Just consider the elaborateness of these allegations: not only did the conspiracy allegedly involve an Iranian assassination plot against a diplomat from Saudi Arabia on U.S. soil, it’s also being tied to the unrest in Bahrain and U.S. losses in Iraq. Thus, the unnamed “cousin,” who Arbabsiar described as a “big general in [the] army,” according to the complaint, is identified in a press release about new OFAC sanctions as Abdul Reza Shahlai — the same man who, as reported by Laura Rozen, was previously designated as the Qods Force deputy commander behind the 2007 raid in southern Iraq by a Shiite militant group that killed five U.S. soldiers. Robert Mackey of the New York Time’s blog The Lede also informs us that Saudi scholar and former royal family adviser Nawaf Obeid told McClatchy that Gholam Shakuri, the other Qods officer behind the alleged plot, was suspected by Saudi intelligence of “fomenting unrest in Bahrain on behalf of Iran’s government.”
So the first conspirator named by Arbabsiar is said to have harmed the U.S. in Iraq, and the second is allegedly behind the protest movement in Bahrain which is ongoing despite the crackdown by Bahrain’s ruling family with the help of some 1,500 Saudi and Emirati troops. Could this really be possible? Always. Is it likely or even plausible? Not really.
Some questions in addition to the ones I asked on the day the accusations were made public:
1) The first mention of Arbabsiar’s “cousin” in the FBI complaint is made by the DEA informant, CS-1: “During their July 14 meeting, CS-l asked ARBABSIAR about ARBABSIAR’s cousin…” This means that the initial conversation about Arbabsiar’s cousin was not documented. Why is that and what did it involve?
2) Since the DEA informant is a “paid confidential source”, how are we to assess his role in the plot, considering his incentives (not necessarily restricted to financial ones) to bring Arbabsiar in? (Also read Stephen Walt’s comments about the FBI’s track record with these kinds of conspiracies.)
3) Would a high-level Qods force member not be able to assess Arbabsiar’s shady and shaky character before asking him to carry out an extremely risky assassination attempt with his own reputation on the line? Was the Iranian Mr. Bean his only option?
4) Even if Arbabsiar’s cousin is indeed Shahlai, and Shahlai is who the U.S. claims he is, does he represent the Iranian government? What if Shahlai, for various possible reasons, acted on his own accord? In other words, was this an Iranian plot or an Iranian cousin’s plot?
Again, the question is not whether Iran is capable of terrorism (because it is) or about Arbabsiar’s guilt, but whether the Iranian government was behind an act of international terrorism on U.S. soil. When the media headlines pieces on this case using phrases like “Iran plot” it is going to be remembered by readers as such regardless of the facts presented. The long-term effects of this on the U.S. psyche remain to be seen, but is there enough evidence to even make that claim at this point? This question is particularly important when prominent pundits such as those that pushed for the invasion of Iraq are pushing for a military response to Iran. Consider the recent words of well-known neoconservative Reuel Marc Gerecht in the Wall Street Journal:
The White House needs to respond militarily to this outrage. If we don’t, we are asking for it.
Until hard evidence is offered by the Obama administration to back up its far-reaching allegations, more questions need to be asked. It’s disconcerting that while the U.S. is gearing up to respond with further punitive measures against Iran, the most important question hasn’t even been adequately answered yet.
]]>“Fishy, fishy, fishy,” Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran who was formerly in charge of the Near East and South Asia on the White House National Security Council, told IPS. “That Iran engages in assassinations is old news. That it would use a Mexican drug cartel would be new.”
And:
“Nothing about this adds up,” said Kenneth Katzman, author of a book on the IRGC and expert on Iran at the Congressional Research Service.
“Iran does not use non-Muslim groups or people who are not trusted members or associates of the Quds force,” Katzman said. “Iran does not blow up buildings in Washington that invites retaliation against the Iranian homeland.”
And:
]]>It is possible that the Iranian cousin “agreed to support him in some way but was doubtful he could pull it off”, Katzman said. “This was not a thoroughly vetted and approved terrorist plot.”
Several U.S. intelligence experts expressed skepticism about the expertise of the DEA in evaluating such a sensitive case.
Riedel noted that the complaint refers to “elements” of the Iranian government, “which suggests that the administration doesn’t think that all elements of the Iranian government were involved”.
An Iranian source, speaking with IPS on condition he not be named, said that the Quds force would investigate the Iranian alleged to have participated in the plot “to find out if there is any personal interest” involved, suggesting an element of freelancing.
Details of the alleged plot by an Iranian-American to hire Mexican drug cartels to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington remain few and far between. But that hasn’t stopped analysts at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) [...]]]>
Details of the alleged plot by an Iranian-American to hire Mexican drug cartels to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington remain few and far between. But that hasn’t stopped analysts at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the Heritage Foundation from calling for a military response.
The Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano weighed in with a blog post promoted at the top of the center’s website. Carafano lists actions “required” in response to the Justice Department’s allegations against Texas used car dealer Manssor Arbabsiar. The first action is:
Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at AEI, called for an end to diplomatic outreach to Tehran, colorfully writing in the New York Daily News:
The time for talk has ended.
And FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz taunted the White House for what he anticipates will be an indecisive reponse to a “brazen attack” — albeit ineptly planned and nowhere near a point of execution — in Washington. While coming up short of explicitly endorsing military action, he writes in the Huffington Post:
Under Obama’s watch the U.S. has imposed tighter sanctions on Iran than those implemented during the George W. Bush administration. Perhaps more importantly, assuming the Attorney General’s indictment holds up, federal law enforcement agencies were highly effective at breaking up a terrorist plot well before it was operational or posed an immediate threat to the U.S. or diplomatic targets in Washington.
Now, with analysts and the media still scratching their heads over what to make of a convoluted plot alleged to have been hatched by an Iranian American in collusion with Mexican drug cartels, FDD, AEI and Heritage analysts — along with their friends in Congress — are quickly declaring the end of diplomatic strategies to curb Iran’s nuclear program and regional ambitions.
]]>Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), one of Washington’s most reliably hawkish politicos on Iran, made clear yesterday that he wants to go over the heads of the Iranian regime and appeal to the Iranian people’s hearts and minds — and he’s willing to forsake their stomachs to [...]]]>
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), one of Washington’s most reliably hawkish politicos on Iran, made clear yesterday that he wants to go over the heads of the Iranian regime and appeal to the Iranian people’s hearts and minds — and he’s willing to forsake their stomachs to do it.
Appearing on a local Chicago radio show, Kirk said the allegedly Iranian-backed assassination plot exposed by the Obama administration yesterday was the perfect excuse to impose broad-based economic sanctions. So broad-based are Kirk’s sanctions that they’re specifically designed to collapse Iran’s currency, the Rial, by targeting the Islamic Republic’s central bank. Kirk was one of a few Republicans to say in the past two days that the allegedly Iranian-backed assassination plot constituted an act of war.
One of the show’s hosts, Ron Majors, asked Kirk whether, as is often the case with sanctions, going after the Iranian economy with such a broad brush stands to hurt ordinary Iranians. Kirk, who acknowledges later in the interview that the current government was “only able to hold onto power by stealing [the] last election,” then made the stunning admission that he didn’t see anything wrong with literally denying food to ordinary Iranians.
Here’s the exchange:
KIRK: It’s okay to take the food out of the mouths of the citizens from a government that’s plotting an attack directly on American soil.
There is no delicate line to tip-toe here: One cannot both see the Iranian regime as an oppressor of the Iranian people and simultaneously decree that it is fine to punish the Iranian people for the actions of a government that has no accountability to them. There is a simple phrase to describe this, and it’s collective punishment.
Perhaps Kirk wants something similar to the sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which did not satiate Washington’s war hawks, and caused serious suffering in Iraq. During the initial years of broad-based sanctions after the first Guld War, infant mortality in Iraq rose more than threefold, from one death out of 30 births in 1990, to one in eight in 1997.
]]>First posted at Gary’s Choices
At the link is the text of an affidavit accusing Iran of organizing a hit on the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. I find this very hard to believe. In fact, this plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures.
To [...]]]>
First posted at Gary’s Choices
At the link is the text of an affidavit accusing Iran of organizing a hit on the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. I find this very hard to believe. In fact, this plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures.
To be sure, Iran has plenty of reasons to be angry at both the United States and Saudi Arabia. They attribute the recent wave of assassinations of physics professors and students, as well as the intrusion of the Stuxnet worm, to the US and Israel. And the king of Saudi Arabia is reliably reported to have called for the US to bomb Iran.
Iran has reportedly been involved in past assassinations in Europe and bombings in Argentina and elsewhere. But the assassinations were of Iranian counter-revolutionaries in the 1980s, and the bombings were always carried out by trusted proxies — normally a branch of Hezbollah. Iran’s fingerprints were always concealed beneath one or more layers of disguise.
Iran has never conducted — or apparently even attempted — an assassination or a bombing inside the US. And it is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions. In this instance, they allegedly relied on at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and US intelligence agents.
Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted for utter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft, e.g. discussing an ultra-covert operation on an open international line between Iran and the US. Yet that is what happened here.
Perhaps this operation is just as it appears. But at a minimum both the public and the Congress should demand more detailed evidence before taking any rash or irreversible action.
If Iran is really as stupid and as incompetent as this case implies, then perhaps they are their own worst enemy and not the clever and determined adversary that they are made out to be.
]]>With news yesterday of a foiled bomb plot that allegedly ties the Iranian government to an attempt to assassinate foreign diplomats in the U.S., Republicans are now calling for escalated actions against the Iranian regime. Many have focused their talking points on describing the alleged Iranian-backed [...]]]>
With news yesterday of a foiled bomb plot that allegedly ties the Iranian government to an attempt to assassinate foreign diplomats in the U.S., Republicans are now calling for escalated actions against the Iranian regime. Many have focused their talking points on describing the alleged Iranian-backed plot as a declaration of war on the U.S. Here’s a quick rundown:
FORMER REP. PETE HOEKSTRA (R-MI)
Pete Hoekstra told the right-wing magazine Newsmax that the plot allegedly coordinated by Iran constituted “acts of war”:
REP. PETER KING (R-NY)
House Homeland Security Committee Chairperson King told CNN that he considered the plot an “act of war” and said “the Iranians have crossed a red line”:
[W]e should not be, I don’t think, automatically saying we’re not going to have a military action. I think everything should be kept on the table when you’re talking about a potential attack against the United States, an act of war.
SEN. MARK KIRK (R-IL)
Appearing on a Chicago talk radio show, Kirk boosted his recent legislative attempt to collapse the Iranian currency by going after the Iranian central bank. Though Kirk didn’t endorse “military action” by the U.S., he justified a new push to move his legislation forward by saying that the Iranian government has already declared war on the U.S.:
RADIO HOST: …You believe this to be true? This is an act of war?…
KIRK: …This is pretty in-your-face by the government of Iran, to be trying to put together bomb plots inside Washington, D.C. And it’ll be now time for the Obama administration to take action.
Watch King and listen to Kirk here:
The plot itself remains merely in indictment form, and, as many commentators have pointed out, we don’t know exactly what was going in this situation, and we do know that a bold move like this would be well out-of-character for Iran’s normally very professional intelligence agencies. Considering the high stakes of possible regional conflagration, perhaps it’s best to save all the “declaration of war” talk until the facts of the case and Iranian complicity are more clear.
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