Two Views

December 2011, Pages 20-22

Two Views

How Plausible Is the Alleged Iranian "Terror Plot"?

FBI Account of "Terror Plot" Suggests Sting Operation

By Gareth Porter

A courtroom drawing of Mansour Arbabsiar (second from right) appearing before U.S. Southern District Court Judge Michael H. Dolinger (at bench) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Glen Kopp (l) during his arraignment at Federal Court in New York, Oct. 11, 2011. (Shirley Shepard/AFP/Getty Images)

While the administration of Barack Obama vows to hold the Iranian government "accountable" for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of an FBI "sting" operation.

Although the legal document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Mansour Arbabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Quds Force, in a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, it also suggests that the idea originated with and was strongly pushed by an undercover DEA informant, at the direction of the FBI.

On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.

In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia."

Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official," wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium."

Because of opium entering Iran from Afghanistan, Iranian authorities hold 85 percent of the world's opium seizures, according to Iran's Fars News Agency. Iranian security personnel, including those in the IRGC and its Quds Force, then have the opportunity to sell the opium to traffickers in the Middle East, Europe and now Mexico.

Mexican drug cartels have begun connecting with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, in many cases stationing operatives in Middle East locations to facilitate heroin production and sales, according to a report last January in Borderland Beat.

But the FBI account of the contacts between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant does not reference any discussions of drugs.

The criminal complaint refers to an unspecified number of meetings between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant in late June and the first two weeks of July.

What transpired in those meetings remains the central mystery surrounding the case.

The official account of the investigation cites the testimony of the informant (referred to in the document as "CS-1") in stating, "Over the course of a series of meetings, ARBABSIAR explained to CS-1 that his associates in Iran had discussed a number of violent missions for CS-1 and CIS-1's purported criminal associates to perform."

The account claims that the mission discussed included murdering the ambassador. But no specific statement proposing or agreeing to the act is attributed to Arbabsiar. "Prior to the July 14 meeting, CS-1 had reported that he and Arbabsiar had discussed the possibility of attacks on a number of other targets," the account states.

The targets are described as involving "foreign government facilities associated with Saudi Arabia and with another country…located either in or outside the United States," without mentioning any discussion of the Saudi ambassador.

Both that language and the absence of any statement attributed to Arbabsiar imply that the Iranian American said nothing about assassinating the Saudi ambassador except in response to suggestions by the informant, who was already part of an FBI undercover operation.

The DEA informant, as the FBI account acknowledges in a footnote, had previously been charged with a narcotics offense by a state in the U.S. and had been cooperating in narcotics investigations—apparently posing as a drug cartel operative—in return for dropping the charges. The document is notably silent on whether the conversation was recorded.

A former FBI official familiar with procedures in such cases, who spoke to IPS anonymously, said the FBI would normally have recorded all such conversations touching on the possibility of terrorism.

The absence of quotes from any of those meetings suggests that they do not support the case being made by the FBI and the Obama administration.

The account is quite explicit, on the other hand, that the July 14 and July 17 meetings were recorded at FBI direction. Statements quoted from those transcripts show the DEA informant trying to induce Arbabsiar to indicate agreement to assassinating the Saudi ambassador.

The informant is quoted as saying he would need "at least four guys" and would "take the one point five for the Saudi Arabia." He declared that he would "go ahead and work on the Saudi Arabia, get all the information we can."

At one point the informant says, "You just want the, the main guy." And at the end of the meeting, he declares, "[W]e're gonna start doing the guy."

The fact that not a single quote from Arbabsiar shows that he agreed to assassinating the ambassador, much less proposed it, suggests that he was either noncommittal or linking the issue to something else, such as the prospect of a major drug deal with the cartel.

Arbabsiar's quotes from a Sept. 2 phone conversation referring to the cartel as "having the number for the safe" and "once you open the door that's it" could refer to a drug transaction that had been discussed, while the FBI account suggests those quotes refer to the assassination and "other projects" with the Iranian group.

At the July 17 meeting, the DEA informant presented a plan to blow up a restaurant to kill the ambassador, with the possible deaths of 100-150 people, eliciting a lack of concern on the part of Arbabsiar about such deaths.

During a visit to Iran in August, Arbabsiar wired two equal payments totaling $100,000 to a bank account in New York. But he was still under the impression that he was about to cash in on a deal with the cartel.

The Washington Post reported on Oct. 13 that Arbabsiar had told an Iranian-American friend from Corpus Christie, Texas, "I'm going to make good money."

There is also circumstantial evidence that Arbabsiar may have even been brought into the sting operation to help further implicate his cousin Gholam Shakuri in the terrorist plot.

Arbabsiar met with his cousin Shakuri in late September and told him that the cartel was demanding that he, Arbabsiar, go to Mexico personally to guarantee payment. That demand from the DEA was an obvious device by the FBI to get Shakuri and his associates in Tehran to demonstrate their commitment to the assassination.

The FBI account indicates that Shakuri told Arbabsiar that he was responsible for himself if he went to Mexico. That statement would have been a warning sign for Arbabsiar, if he still believed he was dealing with one of the most murderous drug cartels in Mexico, that he would be risking his own life for a group that was no longer taking responsibility for him.

Yet Arbabsiar flew to Mexico as if unconcerned about that risk.

After his arrest on Sept. 29 Arbabsiar waived the right to a lawyer and proceeded to provide a complete confession. A few days later, he placed a phone call to Shakuri which was recorded "at the direction of federal enforcement agents," according to the FBI.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006. Copyright © 2011 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

Destabilizing the Middle East

By Patrick Seale

The U.S. government's excitable accusation that Iran paid a Mexican drug dealer to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a Washington restaurant adds a further destabilizing factor to an already dangerously unstable Middle East. It moves the interminable U.S.-Iranian quarrel one step closer to an armed conflict and it fans into flame the latent antagonism between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A U.S.-Iranian war would have potentially devastating consequences for the region, for the United States and the world. The smaller Gulf states, several of them home to large U.S. military bases, would find themselves in the line of fire. Their spectacular accomplishments of recent decades could be turned to rubble. Attacks against U.S. targets in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere would undoubtedly multiply. The Arab world's sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi'i, already greatly exacerbated by America's war in Iraq, would be further increased. For the industrial world, a regional war would immediately disrupt oil supplies, further worsening the current economic crisis.

Not surprisingly, world opinion has reacted with widespread scepticism, even derision, to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement on Oct. 13 of the alleged Iranian plot. Tehran has vigorously denied any connection whatsoever with it. It is, indeed, inherently implausible that Iran would, by means of a terrorist act of no strategic value, risk provoking the U.S. into military retaliation. Most experts agree that the very last thing Iran wants is a war with the United States. The story makes no sense.

If the U.S. government is not to be laughed out of court, it must now produce hard evidence of high-level Iranian implication in the alleged conspiracy. If the plot is no more than an FBI/DEA sting operation which overreached and went wrong, that, too, will need to be candidly examined and explained. If, as some would argue, it is the work of rogue elements in Iran's Quds Force (a wing of the Islamic Republic Guard Corps which, like U.S. Special Forces, specializes in foreign operations), that, too, will need to be convincingly demonstrated.

In any event, America's accusations are bound to increase Iran's paranoid fear that the United States and Israel are planning to attack it, and will therefore drive it to seek deterrence and protection by acquiring a nuclear capability. This is hardly the way to prevent nuclear proliferation. President Barack Obama thus presents the sad spectacle of siding with the war-mongers. He has called for the "toughest sanctions" possible against Iran, as well as repeating the old mantra that "all options remain on the table," a threadbare reference to military action.

His campaign for re-election has already caused him to woo the Jewish vote by opposing the Palestinians' bid for U.N. membership while turning a blind eye to the "Greater Israel" ambitions of Israel's fanatical settlers. The United States guarantees Israel's military supremacy over all its neighbors yet is clearly unable to exercise the slightest influence over Israeli policies, even the most extreme. Now—once again perhaps for electoral reasons—Obama has gone a step further by echoing, and seeming to endorse, Israeli threats of military action against Iran.

News of the so-called plot comes at the very time when top Iranian officials—including President Ahmadinejad himself—have called for fresh talks with the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) on Iran's nuclear program. That in itself presents a striking contradiction. How could Iran seek talks and yet, at the same time, act in such a way as to make them impossible?

The obvious conclusion would seem to be that the plot was contrived by someone anxious to sabotage the possibility of a U.S.-Iranian dialogue, let alone a compromise over Iran's nuclear activities. Indeed, the so-called plot reeks of a "false flag" operation—that is to say an operation by a third party deliberately designed to push the United States into conflict with the Islamic Republic.

There are many potential candidates for such a role, all anxious to see the Iranian regime punished. They include Iranian exiles longing to see the mullahs ousted; Lebanese enemies of Hezbollah, whether Sunni or Maronite, many of whom have Latin American connections; opponents of the Iran-backed Syrian regime who believe that Bashar al-Assad would be gravely weakened if the Iranian regime were to fall; American neocons itching for war against Iran, the very same people who conned America into war against Iraq; and of course Israel's Mossad which, by all accounts, is a master at intelligence coups. It is thought to have been responsible for the recent murder of several Iranian nuclear scientists as well as for infecting the computers at Iran's nuclear power station with toxic viruses such as Stuxnet.

Israel's right-wing government has spared no effort to demonize Iran's nuclear program as a deadly threat to mankind and has been eager to push the United States into destroying it. Israel's motive is clear. If Iran were to acquire a nuclear capability, however rudimentary, it would checkmate Israel's own large arsenal of nuclear weapons, and greatly restrict Israel's ability to strike its neighbors at will.

Rather than fueling tensions as Obama is doing, rather than pandering to America's worst instincts, the wise leader of a superpower should seek to pacify the region, resolve conflicts and cool tempers. Improbable as it may seem, Obama should talk to Iran rather than demonize it; he should devote himself again and again—and this time with more muscle and conviction—to settling the Arab-Israeli conflict, thereby removing a major factor of instability and opening the way for Israel's peaceful integration into the region; he should seek to calm, rather than inflame, sectarian antagonisms; he should disengage the United States militarily, and as soon as possible, from Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf region; and he should halt the counter-productive drone attacks which create more terrorists than they kill and which, under his watch, have brought death and destruction to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

The Middle East needs an end to the imperial ambitions and machinations which have plagued the region since the First World War. Urgently required instead is a massive coordinated international effort to revive the shattered economies of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria and the Palestinian territories—and, above all, create jobs. Without jobs, there will be no peace.

The United States is said to be redirecting its efforts to the Far East in order to contain the rising power of China. The sooner it gives the Middle East a break by turning its attention elsewhere, the better.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press). Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale. Distributed by Agence Global.