Iranians charged in American plot to kill Saudi ambassador

An Iranian in custody has confessed to a plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador As the U.S. expresses anger over Iran’s alleged attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on its soil, a U.S.-Iran-Saudi issue is being formulated. “It is obvious now that there is a decision that the U.S. has made regarding Iran,” said Abdullah al-Shimmari, a Saudi-based International Relations researcher.
On Wednesday, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that the U.S. is working to unite world opinion behind a possible action against “outrageous” Iranian behavior.
“The first thing we do is make sure the entire world and all of the capitals in the world understand what the Iranians had in mind,” Biden said.
According to international conventions, it is not customary for countries to make public of such information, said Shimmari.
“The beginning of the event took place in May, so why the timing, why now?” he added.
The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday charged two men with conspiring with Iranian government factions to kill Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir on U.S. soil.
The alleged plot involved detonating a bomb at a restaurant he frequented.
“Iran proved that it does not want to be a good neighbor,” Shimmari said, citing that the Iranian regime is a theologically-driven one. He said that Saudi Arabia is worried now, as it does not want to be involved or embroiled between the two and that the Gulf is not all unified on one stance regarding Iran.
Saudi Arabia was increasingly feeling uncomfortable over U.S.-Iran “political flirtation” and expressed “disappointment” that the U.S. was getting “closer” to Iran, the Saudi researcher said.
In September there were reports that the U.S. and Iran were considering to establish an emergency “hotline” between the two countries’ militaries after a series of “near-miss” encounters in the Gulf.
“Saudis did not like the idea of the “hot line” between the U.S. navy and Iran,” Shimmari added.
A harsher U.S. stance against Iran did not materialize, despite Wikileaks documents showing not only that the Saudi king has urged the U.S. to strike Iran, but also that the U.S. overlooked Iran’s behavior in the region because of the Islamic republic’s influence in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Critics have long said that Iran and the U.S. can be described both as allies and enemies.
Meanwhile, the London-based Hamid al-Kinani, an expert on Iranian affairs, said that Iran has only the means of “political provocation” as a way to reach its political aims, especially with the backdrop of Iran’s gradual economic collapse.
He said that the World Bank expected Iran to see 2.5 percent growth in 2010, weak compared to its Middle Eastern counterparts.
Kinani said that Iran wants to send a strong message that it has the strength and the capability to launch an operation inside America.
“The operation, if successful, it would have boosted the morale of Iran’s allies, including Hezbollah and Syria,” he said, adding “[It could have] prevented or coerced the regional countries from cooperating with the United States.”
On Wednesday, Alarabiya TV said anonymous but credible sources claimed that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had formed a team to carry out assassinations of dissidents, including Arab and foreign political and media figures abroad. The assassination team was formed in cooperation with a special unit in the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard.
The sources said that after Ahmadinejad’s crisis with the regime’s ultra-conservative factions and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Iranian president suggested that Islamic Republic should go back to the era of assassinating figures abroad to stave off any attempts to change the regime, especially with the backdrop of ongoing Arab revolutions.
The sources said that the assassination unit of Quds is mobilizing cells abroad, and has recruited new volunteers. If Syria, a close ally of Iran, is hit, the cells will carry out assassinations abroad, the sources said.
Asked whether the top ranks of the regime were informed about the operation, Kinani said that “it is definitely from the top; $1.3 million is not by any means a ‘frugal’ amount of money, and it indicates that it has to do with the regime.”
Shammari said the plot “definitely” shows that “there is a schism in the Iranian regime, between the extremists Republican Guards and Ahmadinejad, whom I consider merely as a manager.”
In November 2010, Ahmadinejad came under unprecedented criticism from the Revolutionary Guards, the elite military force usually considered his staunch supporter, for saying that the parliament is no longer at the center of affairs and is promoting an “Iranian” rather than an “Islamic” school of thought.
“The Republican Guard did not expect that they were to be exposed; it would have been a mini September 11 on American soil again,” he added.
Rasool Nafisi, an Iranian-American scholar who studies the Revolutionary Guards, told The New York Times that the plot was unlikely approved at a high level by Iranian officials.
“It’s not typical of the Quds Force or the I.R.G.C. to operate in the U.S., for fear of retaliation,” Nafisi said.
Iran has killed people it considered enemies outside of the Islamic republic. In 1992 four Iranian dissidents were killed in a Berlin restaurant.
The gunman who killed the four dissidents was also accused of plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador to Sweden.




Al Arabiya.