The FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency( DEA) were responsible for thwarting what was referred to as an assassin-for-hire plot by Iran to kill Saudi ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubei.
A naturalized U.S. citizen holding Iranian and U.S. passports and a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard will face conspiracy charges for their part in the plot.
The Iranians, of course are denying it out of hand, although a spokesman for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Iranian government was awaiting details about the accusations that he described as a "fabrication" by the U.S.
Meanwhile the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington issued a statement Tuesday thanking U.S. authorities for stepping in.
"The attempted plot is a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions and is not in accord with the principles of humanity," the embassy's statement said.
The Saudi ambassador was not the only one on the hit list. U.S. officials said the suspects also discussed attacking Israeli and Saudi embassies in Washington and possibly Buenos Aires, Argentina. There's a huge Hezbollah cell there, for those who've forgotten.
U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, later told CNN he was confident the plan was sanctioned by the Iranian government.
"The quickness of the decisions that were made in order for certain elements of this to fall into place tells us that it is clearly tied to the highest levels of the Iranian government," he said.
Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, and Gholam Shakuri, an Iran-based member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, are charged with conspiracy to murder a foreign official, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, an FBI agent's affidavit released Tuesday alleged.
Arbabsiar was arrested in September. Shakuri remains at large, the FBI said.
Authorities developed the case against them with the help of an undercover informant posing as an associate of a Mexican drug cartel, officials and court documents said.
The Mexican drug cartel detail ought to raise some hackles. Regular members of Joshua's Army have known about the link between terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and drug cartels for quite some time. Both groups, just like the Taliban in Afghanistan have drug sales and processing as an important part of their finances and have done deals with various cartels in Latin America,the Mafia and Union Corse' in Europe and the Chinese Triads in Asia. And if terrorism expert Steve Emerson is correct, a number of Hezbollah operatives and sympathizers have already gotten into the U.S. via our porous southern border.
I also found it interesting that Attorney General Eric Holder took a few minutes today to take credit for the FBI and DEA's work. A question comes to mind:Why is it that Eric Holder claims to know absolutely nothing about operations like Fast and Furious that ended in disaster, but is presenting himself as being entirely in the loop and responsible for an operation he had absolutely nothing to do with that ended successfully? Especially ironic since the Iranians may very well have approached one of the Mexican cartels to buy weaponry the cartels got hold of via Holder and Fast and Furious.
And then of course,there's the timing. The announcement of an arrest that took place two weeks ago at a press conference today by an Attorney General who's already been caught lying to Congress and is about to subpoenaed is, well, just a mite suspicious, wouldn't you say?
As for the Iranian plot itself,I remember a time when this would have constituted an act of war, just like seizing a US embassy and taking American diplomats as hostages once would have been. Instead, this is going to be played down, with maybe some rhetoric that signifies absolutely nothing.And Iran knows it.
The Mullahs aren't stupid. They know weakness when they see it, and they see it in Obama the same as they once saw it in Jimmy Carter.
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