The US government Tuesday charged an Iranian-American with trying to hire a gunman to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
It also accused a second Iranian, who is in Iran, of organizing the plot. The second man was described as an officer of the Qods Force, the branch of the Pasdaran that is charged with operations outside Iran.
There was no explanation for why Iran might want to kill Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir. He is young, professional diplomat who speaks fluent English. He has not been identified with any virulently anti-Iranian faction within the Saudi government.
The plot was a surprise. The Islamic Republic carried out dozens of assassinations abroad of its enemies—mostly Iranian dissidents, but including Saudi diplomats and others—in the 1980s and 1990s. But in the mid-90s, it called a halt to such plots outside the Middle East because two had caused major embarrassments for Iran.
Those were the stabbing murder of former Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar near Paris and the gangland-style execution of four leaders of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran in Berlin’s Mykonos restaurant in the 1990s. Iranian nationals were arrested in both cases. Their trials brought Iran into much disrepute and the overseas assassinations ground to a halt.
The Bakhtiar and Mykonos killings were different from most regime assassinations in that Iranian nationals were the actual killers. Usually Iran hired non-Iranians to carry actual assassinations.
And that is what the United States said happened in the new case.
Those charged are Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old Iranian-American dual national, who is now in jail, and Ali-Gholam Shakuri, whom authorities said was a Qods Force officer and is still at large in Iran. News reports said Arbabsiar lived in Corpus Christi, Texas. It appeared from the court filings that the two men were cousins.
Justice Department officials said Arbabsiar approached a Mexican this past May to ask about his knowledge of explosives for a plot to blow up the Saudi embassy in Washington. It isn’t known why Arbabsiar chose that particular Mexican—but he happened to be an undercover agent for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
During later conversations in English, which were secretly recorded, Arbabsiar offered $1.5 million for the Mexican to arrange the death of the ambassador, perhaps at a Washington restaurant that is a favorite of his, despite the possibility of mass casualties.
Attorney General Eric Holder said the “deadly plot … [was] directed by factions of the Iranian government.” Asked if the highest echelons of the regime knew of the plot, Holder said the Justice Department was not making that accusation. However, he did say the plot was organized by a Qods Force officer, who would be unlikely to plot an assassination of a foreigner without being tasked by his superiors. One reason for Holder’s reticence might be to avoid laying out any justification for war.
Posing as an associate of a Mexican drug cartel, the DEA informant met with Arbabsiar several times in Mexico, authorities said. Arbabsiar made a $100,000 down payment wired from an overseas account.
Arbabsiar was arrested September 29 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors said Arbabsiar has confessed to his participation in the murder plot.
President Obama was first briefed on the plot in June, according to White House spokesman Tommy Vietor. It wasn’t known if the ambassador was told in advance of the arrest, but it would be normal to inform him.
Attorney General Holder said the bomb plot was a flagrant violation of US and international law.
Iran rejected the US charges; the state news agency, called the accusation “America’s new propaganda scenario” against the Tehran government.
Alizreza Miryusefi, the press attaché at Iran’s mission to the United Nations, said the accusation was “totally baseless” and that a full statement would be issued shortly.
The Islamic Republic has carried out only one known assassination inside the United States. That was the 1981 shooting of Ali-Akbar Tabatabai, the press attaché at Iran’s pre-revolutionary embassy in Washington. After the revolution, he appeared frequently on American television and proved to be a main to the revolutionary regime. He was shot by David Belfield, an American black Muslim recruited for the task. Immediately after the shooting, Belfield drove to Montreal and caught a plane for Iran. He is still living there.
The main charges filed against Arbabsiar and Shakuri are: Conspiracy in the commission of murder-for-hire; conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives); and conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism transcending national boundaries.
Richard Clarke, the top White House counterterrrorism adviser in the Clinton and Bush administrations, said, “Ultimately [Iran] had to believe we would find out they were behind it … and would attack them militarily.” That, he told National Public Radio, “suggests, if true, that they’re looking for a fight.”
Clarke said, “There may be elements inside Iran that think it would be good for them in terms of domestic politics for there to be a fight with the United States.” A US strike on Iran might, he says, boost support for Iran’s leaders as people there “rally around the flag.”
But Clarke said this is “a really strange plot.” Iranian secret services, “are very professional,” he said. “To hire some Mexican drug gang so indirectly” struck him as highly unusual.
“This is dangerous new territory for Iran,” said Congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “It is the latest in a series of aggressive actions – from their nuclear program to state sponsorship of terrorism, from complicity in killing our soldiers in Iraq to now plotting hostile acts on US soil. This episode underscores the need for concerted international unity to confront Iran.”
The Justice Department said Arbabsiar told US investigators he had been recruited, funded and directed by men he believed were senior officials in Iran’s Qods Force. This month, after his arrest, he made phone calls at the direction of US officials to Shakuri, who confirmed the plot should move forward as quickly as possible, the Justice Department said.
According to the complaint filed in court, Arbabsiar told the killer he thought he was hiring: “This is politics. It’s not like, eh, personal. . . . this is politics.”
Elsewhere in the complaint, Arbabsiar is said to have directed that the assassination be carried out even if it would cause a large number of casualties: “They want that guy done, if the hundred go with him.”
Immediately after the charges were announced, the US Treasury Department announced it was applying sanctions to five people implicated in the plot: Arbabsiar; Shakuri; Pasdar commander Qassem Soleimani; Hamed Abdollahi, a senior Pasdar officer who coordinated aspects of the plot and oversaw the other Qods Force officials directly responsible for coordinating and planning this operation; and Abdul-Reza Shahlai, a Pasdar officer who help coordinate the plot. Shakuri was described as a deputy to Shahlai.
