CSM: Used-car salesman as Iran proxy? Why assassination plot doesn't add up for experts.

[Poll_Blind]

This story is rapidly unfolding across the world. This recent article is from http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1012/Used-car-salesman-as-Iran-proxy-Why-assassination-plot-doesn-t-add-up-for-experts">The Christian Science Monitor:

How careful is Iran's Qods Force when it comes to covert operations abroad?

This wing of the Revolutionary Guard was accused by US military commanders in Iraq in 2007 and 2008 of jeopardizing the efforts of more than 150,000 American troops on the ground, of backing militias of all stripes, and of exercising strong influence on Baghdad's rulers.

Yet how many Iranian Qods Force operatives did that take? One US diplomat posted to Baghdad at the time had the consensus answer: There were just eight Qods Force men in all of Iraq.

Indeed, the Qods Force has a reputation for careful, methodical work – as well as effective use of local proxies, and ultimately their pragmatic deployment by Tehran as covert tools to expand Iran's influence across a region in flux. That explains why Iran experts are raising questions about fresh US charges of an Iran-backed bomb plot, this time to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies.

Much more at the link- this is a fairly detailed analysis and one worth reading, IMO. If you're just learning of this breaking news, the sections are especially helpful:
:bluebox: Details of alleged plot
:bluebox: Why the plot doesn't add up
:bluebox: No apparent cost-benefit analysis
:bluebox: Previous assassinations only targeted Iranians
:bluebox: Not your average proxy

Again, much more information at the link up top.

Related:
Time Magazine (Bob Baer): http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2096747,00.html">Washington Bombing Plot Is Out of Character for Iran's Professional Killers

Just when you think the Middle Easy couldn't get any weirder, along comes an Iranian plot to assassinate the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Washington. The plot has was described by FBI Director Robert Muller as plucked right out of a Hollywood script — if so, it would be a truly awful Hollywood script. None of it measures up to Iran's unsurpassed skill in conducting assassinations. As for motives, there are no convincing ones.

According to the Department of Justice indictment, an Iranian-American used-car salesman attempted to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit.

Time Magazine (A. Moaveni): http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2096756,00.html">The Arbabsiar Case: Could Rogue Elements in Iran Be Behind It?

In early 2009, after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader declared that anyone killed defending Palestine would be rewarded as a martyr, hundreds of young Iranians descended up Tehran's Mehrabad airport demanding to board flights to meet their deaths. Flummoxed that Khamenei was taken so literally, the government dispatched members of parliament, mullahs, and war veterans to the departure terminal to talk the young people out of this, but the militants refused to budge. The ayatollah himself was finally obliged to issue another edict the following week thanking the youth for their zeal, but ordering them to stay home.

Policy circles in Tehran call this tendency Iran's "problem of the radicals" — essentially the way the country's zealots are imperfectly programmed to behave rashly, at times serving the regime's propaganda aims, but often requiring cooler heads to prevail. It's not just the grassroots militants (private citizens and the volunteer Basij militia) who can veer radically off message. Iran's Revolutionary Guards, whose Quds Force directs the country's activities in places like Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq, has been split between zealous ideologues and pragmatists for at least a decade. They have often pushed positions more aggressively than the Iranian government itself, and sabotaged official policy. In the years when Iran's government sought to distance itself from the late Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against the writer Salman Rushdie, for example, zealots in the ranks of the Guards piped up to note that fatwas couldn't be undone.

--snip--

Because the Quds force is known for the extremists within its ranks, the question has emerged this week whether its rogue agents might be behind the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. If Quds rogues were at work, they were poorly-equipped to carry out the job. The plot's far-fetched contours, many analysts say, fall squarely outside the pattern of Quds Force activity. With access to unlimited cash and strong ties to regional networks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Quds Force typically operates through local proxies, leaving few fingerprints behind.

CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/12/opinion/hunter-nothing-certain-iran-plot/">Nothing's certain about Iranian plot

Ahmadinejad is under attack by conservatives, including powerful elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Fars News, which represents the views of the Guards, has been conducting a relentless campaign against him for the past year. Recent corruption charges in Iran at least partially reflect this power struggle. So it is more than conceivable that the assassination plot is part of an effort to discredit Ahmadinejad.

But at a time when Iran is under worse economic and political pressure than ever, and is desperate to avert more sanctions and military attacks, as some in the United States, Europe and the Middle East want, it's hard to believe even the Islamic Revolutionary Guards would be so stupid as to provide them with a perfect reason to do so.

Tuscon Sentinel: http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/101211_iran_plot/assassination-plot-doesnt-fit-past-iranian-behavior/">Assassination plot doesn't fit past Iranian behavior

The alleged Iranian plot to use Mexican cartel gunmen to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington is one of the strangest, most serious terrorism cases to surface in years, a mix of seemingly credible evidence and unlikely scenarios that departs dramatically from Iran's past record of global terrorist activity.

On Tuesday, a grim-faced U.S. attorney general and the FBI director accused Iranian intelligence officials in an alleged $1.5 million scheme to kill Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir of Saudi Arabia in a bombing at a restaurant in the capital.

The federal indictment has escalated an already fierce conflict between the United States and Iran, alleging a brazen decision by Iranian officials to shed blood on U.S. soil and an ominous convergence of threats from separate worlds: Iran's far-flung terror apparatus and the Zetas, a drug cartel founded by former Mexican commandos.

And the DrumBeat, too, has gotten much louder over just the last few hours:
The State Column: http://www.thestatecolumn.com/articles/trent-franks-to-obama-time-to-set-an-ultimatum-on-iran/">Trent Franks to Obama: Time to set an ultimatum on Iran
The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8823049/America-launches-international-campaign-to-punish-Iran-over-alleged-ties-to-terror-plot.html">America launches international campaign to punish Iran over alleged ties to terror plot
NPR: http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/141283126/u-s-will-try-to-put-iran-in-a-vise">U.S. Will Try To 'Put Iran In A Vise'

Something I have noticed reading quite a few articles today: They seem to break down into one of two groups: The first, which analyzes the allegations and near-universally seems to come to the conclusion that this doesn't fit the pattern of behavior for Quds or, if related, the work of a rogue element within it. Or those that unquestioningly accept and amplify the allegations and move right along to the next step, the penalty phase for Iran.

This is a very quickly developing story and one which has driven an enormous amount of analysis online in a very short period of time.

Also see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2104651">NPR interview with Richard Clarke on "really strange" alleged Iranian terror plot

PB

[Scuba]

1. See "Gulf of Tonkin" for further details...

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261

[Poll_Blind]

2. Well, I'm not necessarily convinced the entire story is fabricated. BUT, the concept that this...

...is an example of state-sponsored terrorism is near-universally capable of being paraphrased as "quite a bit more than a stretch" by all the analysis I've read so far.

The fact that the case relies heavily on Arbabsiar's testimony, who was busted and who turned state's evidence...Seems extremely convenient, especially given the unusual nature of the alleged attacks and the sophistication the Iranian government would use if it were behind such a thing.

It seems like an overly-convenient reading of a situation which benefits Arbabsiar, the FBI, The War On Terra and those in the administration who would seek to appease certain allies hungry for revenge on Iran.

PB

[Scuba]

4. Don't forget this might have been orchestrated by BP....

... just like US policy towards Iran has been for 50 years.

[tularetom]

3. Time to dust this off again?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3851426890212250833

It might just be true, if they were making it up they'd have come up with something more believable.

[Poll_Blind]

5. I also find myself dusting off another video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO_8RwXMMwI">What Barry Says

PB

[Ruby the Liberal]

6. K&R

This didn't make any sense to me from the beginning. I know the Saudi's are covertly against Iran's drive to acquire nuclear capabilities (not exactly a state secret) but claiming the Iranians are lazy/stupid/nearsighted enough to use a disconnected civilian and the Mexicans? Not a chance, IMO. They ain't that dumb and there is WAY too much for them to lose in the region.

[sarcasmo]

7. Because it was a script MR. Mueller.