but seems to have put the plot on the back burner now that it is engaged in talks with the major powers on its nuclear program, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The Post said US and Middle Eastern officials it contacted believe they have stumbled across a broad campaign “by Iran-linked operatives to kill foreign diplomats in at last seven countries”—Azerbaijan, Georgia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Turkey and the United States.
The plots in Georgia, Thailand and India all came to light over two days in February when bombs went off or were discovered in those countries—an unexploded bomb attached to the car of an Israeli embassy staffer in Georgia, and Israeli diplomat’s wife injured in a car bombing in New Delhi and an Iranian bomber who lost both his legs when a bomb he was tossing bounced back at him just before it exploded.
The US part of the plot was announced by American prosecutors last fall when they indicted an Iranian-American from Texas for trying to hire a man he thought was a Mexican drug cartel mobster (but who was actually an undercover agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration) to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
The Post article did not describe the parts of the scheme planned for Turkey and Pakistan.
The bulk of the article described the plot in Azerbaijan, which the Iran Times reported on its March 30 issue. That report said Azerbaijan had arrested 22 Azerbaijani citizens said to have been hired by the Pasdaran to carry out terrorist attacks against the US and Israeli embassies—and an American-style fast-food restaurant.
A month earlier, Azerbaijan announced the arrest of another suspected terrorist group allegedly working for Iran’s secret services, and in January it arrested two people accused of plotting to kill two teachers at a Jewish school in Baku.
The Post article, however, focused on the March arrests of 22 alleged terrorists, which the Post said US investigators judge to be true.
The Post said electronic messages alerted Azerbaijan to Iranian contacts with Balagar-desh Dashdev, a reputed gangster. Late last year, weapons were smuggled into Azerbaijan with at least 10 Iranian nationals recruited to take part in the plot.
It said the plan to kill Americans in Baku had two strands, one involving a car bomb and the other snipers with silencer-equipped rifles. The intended targets, it said, were not just diplomats but family members as well.
The newspaper reported that Dashdev said he was told the purpose was revenge for the murders in Tehran of nuclear scientists.
The Azerbaijani National Security Ministry said in its statement in March that an Iranian Pasdar operative, Akbar Pakravesh, recruited an Azeri identified as N. Kerimov while he was in Iran in 1999 and gave him the job of assembling a group of other Azerbaijanis.
Pakravesh met with members of the group in Moscow and in Damascus, giving them financing and equipment.
Automatic assault rifles, grenades, ammunition and explosives were seized during the group’s arrest, officials said.
All those arrested by Azer-baijan were Azerbaijani citizens. No mention was made of any Iranian operatives inside Azer-baijan.
Planned targets included diplomatic missions, the offices of a Jewish organization, the local headquarters of the BP oil firm and an American-themed fast food restaurant.
The Post said all of the plots in the seven countries “halted abruptly” this spring, presumably when Iran decided to resume diplomatic talks. “There appears to have been a deliberate attempt to calm things down ahead of the talks,” the Post quoted a Western diplomat as saying. “What happens if the talks fail—that’s anyone’s guess.”