Is Iran’s Alleged Cash-for-Assassinations Plot Too Implausible to Be True?

Is Iran’s Alleged Cash-for-Assassinations Plot Too Implausible to Be True?
By Paul Mutter, October 12, 2011 – FPIF

Today, US Attorney General Eric Holder reported that an FBI-DEA action, “Operation Red Coalition,” has successfully prevented a campaign of Iranian terrorist attacks in the US and Argentina. Attorney General Holder and law enforcement personnel all assert that the operations were approved at highest levels of the Iranian government, but refer to “factions of the Iranian government” rather than “the Iranian government” as being responsible. Despite the saber-rattling, it appears that the US government does not want to completely assign blame for the attack on Iran’s top leadership.

A criminal complaint has been filed, based off of an FBI affidavit presented to a New York judge, charging five Iranians, including several Iranian-Americans, with plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel Al-Jubeir. They are also suspected of seeking to bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in both DC and Buenos Aires.

Purportedly undertaken in the spring with the blessing of high-level Iranian officials, an Iranian-American naturalized citizen named Mansour Arbabsiar approached a DEA informant (referred to only as “CS-1”) masquerading as a member of “Drug Cartel #1,” which ABC reports is probably the Mexican-based Los Zetas Cartel. As to why Mansour approached cartels, he is said to have been ordered to by his superiors “because people in that business are willing to undertake criminal activity in exchange for money.”

US media reports that Mansour also promised CS-1 to supply his/her cartel with “tons of opium” as part of their deal, though this has not been mentioned in any of the papers made public by the Justice Department.

CS-1 is described as “a paid confidential source” who, in exchange for having unspecified State Department charges dropped against him/her, agreed to become a mole for the DEA. The report discloses that CS-1 is on federal payrolls and is regarded as a “reliable” source of intelligence, and that some of the exchanges between Mansour took place in Mexico. The DEA’s informant policies are extremely well-kept secrets, and also very expensive and controversial. And like the FBI’s informant programs that have exposed numerous alleged terrorist plots, this plot was, apparently, held together by the informant, who presented himself as an explosives expert and promised to deliver C-4 for the operation.

Working through Mansour, the group in Iran was said to have sent US$100,000 (obtained from the Iranian government) to CS-1 as a “down payment” on a US$1.5 million assassination contract. When CS-1 suggested that an attack on the ambassador in a restaurant would also kill US civilians, Mansour replied that “sometime [sic], you know, you have no choice,” a point that US officials have (somewhat hypocritically, as Glenn Greenwald points out, given our “collateral damage” record overseas) reiterated time and again to try and demonstrate that the Iranians are somehow unbalanced psychopaths.…more