Gareth Porter
Asia Times Online
October 14, 2011
While the Barack Obama administration 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 a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sting operation.
Although the document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Mansour Arabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Qods 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 [Department of Drug Enforcement] informant, at the direction of the FBI”.
On May 24, when Arabsiar 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.
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