The Iranian "Assassination Plot"
I'm sure y'all are familiar now with this alleged "assassination plot" by Iran to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US. I have been reading and following this story for a few days to get in as much information as possible, and from what I see, this is a hum-dinger all right -- of bulls**t.
The alleged plot runs like this, according to the Department of Justice narrative: The evil Muslims in Iran decide to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. This job is going to be on US soil in a grand, terrorist fashion, provoking two acts of war (with the US and the Saudis) and have very questionable value to the interests of Iran. But no matter -- these are, after all, the "Mad Mullahs" of Iran, who want to blow up Israel with nukes, so anything is possible.
In order to facilitate their masterstroke, the Qods (the Revolutionary Guard of Iran, the secret police/espionage unit) decides to bankroll a certain Manssor Arbabsiar, a failed used car saleman in Texas with a string of other failed businesses and a minor criminal record. In a profile of this Terrorist Mastermind, his former acquaintences have the following to say about him:
“He was pretty disorganized, always losing things like keys, titles, probably a thousand cellphones,” said David Tomscha, an Aransas Pass businessman who ran a used-car lot with Arbabsiar. “He wasn't meticulous with taking care of things.
”Tom Hosseini, an Iranian whose friendship with Arbabsiar dates back 30 years, went as far as calling Arbabsiar “a joke.” Thee two were roommates at what's now Texas A&M University-Kingsville, but Arbabsiar dropped out after two semesters and finished his degree in Louisiana. It was Hosseini who nicknamed Arbabsiar “Jack,” for the quantities of Jack Daniel's whiskey Arbabsiar would drink.
Ah! But he must be one of those crazy, fanatic Muslims that love to blow things up, including themselves, for Allah, right? Is this guy the next Osama bin-Ladin in terms of his religoius fervor? Well not quite:
“He couldn't even pray, doesn't know how to fast. He used to drink, smoke pot, go with the prostitutes,” Hosseini said, laughing with a clerk at his market in downtown Corpus Christi. “His first wife left him because he would lose his keys every other day. ... This guy is not a mastermind.”
In 1983, Arbabsiar was attacked and stabbed 32 times and left for dead, spending six months in the hospital. This must have had an impact on his overall health, including his mental capacities. Apparently this guy couldn't keep track of his keys or his cell phone. He would on a regular basis lose titles for the cars in his business -- no wonder it went broke -- and may have very well been suffering from some kind of mental problem. Just the kind of person that the Qods would recruit to mastermind a terror activity on American soil right?
I beg to differ on that. The Iranians may be a bit over the top, but at the same time the Qods does know what it's doing, and this guy seems to be the exact opposite of the type of person they would want for such a sensitive operation. However, as we will see later, it's quite the type of person that our government might very well want to get their hands on.
Anyway, it gets a lot worse. The Qods, now with the fanatical mastermind Arbabsiar in their pay, order him to get in contact with the Mexican cartels to do the hit. If the idea that the Iranians are going to get a jackass in their employ to commit a masterstroke doesn't send your BS meter up to "high", the idea that they would want the Mexican Cartels in on the job should really empty the bucket of any credibility.
It's well known around the world that the Mexican Cartels are a bunch of criminal thugs with no morals. The idea that the Qods would get this scatterbrained moron to hire the Mexican Cartel Las Zetas to do a hit for them, on American soil, strikes any right thinking person as utterly incredulous. As Gary Sick, at the Middle East Instittue at Columbia University had to say:
"It is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions. In this instance, they allegedly relied on at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and U.S. intelligence agents. Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted forutter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft, e.g.discussing an ultra-covert operation on an open international line between Iran and the U.S. Yet that is what happened here."
Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst with the Congressional Research Office, concurs:
"There is simply no precedent - or even reasonable rationale - for Iran working any plot, no matter where located, through a non-Muslim proxy such as Mexican drug gangs. No one high up in the Quds, the I.R.G.C. command, the Supreme National Security Committee, or anywhere else in the Iranian chain of command would possibly trust that such a plot could be kept secret or carried out properly by the Mexican drug people. They absolutely would not trust such a thing to them, given Iran’s undoubted assumption that the Mexicans are penetrated by the D.E.A. and F.B.I. and A.T.F., etc - and indeed this plot was revealed by just such a U.S. informant….
"Are we to believe that this Texas car seller was a Quds sleeper agent for many years resident in the U.S.? Ridiculous. They (the Iranian command system) never ever use such has-beens or loosely connected people for sensitive plots such as this."
But no matter, the official narrative has been given and that's all our government worshpping press needs.
Anyway, this alleged person with "strong contacts" in the Mexican Mafia goes to hire a member of Las Zetas, who rather helpfully turns out to be an informant working for the DEA. One would think that if Mssr. Arbabisar were such a well connected person, he wouldn't run right into the DEA man in the field -- but that's exactly what happened.
As the official narrative goes, Mr. Arbabisar offered to pay this person, known as "CS-1" in the indictment, $1.5US Million to do the hit. "CS-1" then began feeding him ideas for how to do it, eventually working up to blowing up a ficticious restaurant which the Saudi Ambassador was allegedly known to frequent. Mr. Arbabisar, who in the indictment can't seem to figure out if he's getting money from a "colonel" or a "general" in Iran, then allegedly says "kill just him if you can, but if you have to blow up everyone in the place, f**k them."
Two payments of over $49,000 each are wired from a "foreign source" (not named in the criminal complaint) to Chase Manhattan Bank, as a down payment for the hit job. What was the source of this funding? The only other "evidence" that the FBI has of any real note is a series of conversations, over an open line, with Arbabisar's cousin (either a "general" or a "colonel" who Arbabisar told CS-1 was "on CNN" -- a lie).
Several things are really odd about this whole thing. As we see in the criminal complaint, Arbabisar says he was initially contacted by his cousin Gholam Shakuri to kidnap, not murder, the Saudi Ambassador. But when he went to Mexico to meet "CS-1" the plot turned to a murder of the Ambassador. Why would this suddenly turn into a murder when it seems this "high ranking member of the Qods" wanted a kidnapping?
Allegedly, Arbabisar went to Iran and met with his cousin Shakuri and a second "high ranking members of the Qods." It was there he was vetted with being the middleman between the Qods and Las Zetas. The agreed upon word for the assassination was "Chevrolet." However, when Arbabisar was aressed and confessed, he made phone calls to Shakuri (on an open line -- this "high ranking member of the Qods" must be a total idiot), where they used two terms, "Chevrolet" and "the Building". This discussion is very interesting to say the least:
[Arbabsiar] I wanted to tell you, the Chevrolet is ready, it’s ready, uh, to be done. I should continue, right?
[Shakuri] Yes, yes, yes. You mean you are buying all of it?
[Arbabsiar] I don’t know for now, it’s ready, okay?
[Shakuri] So buy it, buy it.
[Arbabsiar] Buy it? Okay.
[Shakuri] Buy it, yes, buy all of it.
[Arbabsiar] this boy wants, uh, some money, he wants some expenditure. What do you say, should we give him some more? He wants another 50.
[Shakuri] With you, no, you … that amount is fine. [UI] give him the rest. He should buy the car for us first. [ellipsis original]
[Shakuri] Do it quickly, it’s late, just buy it for me and bring it already.
"Buy it" and "bring it"...later on in the taped conversation, Shakuri wants to know if they are indeed going to get "the merchandice."
Now, call me crazy, but what would people go to the Mexican Mafia for in reality? Would the Qods go to them to stage a brazen attack on a diplomat's life in a country just looking for a reason to lob a few cruise missles their way? Or...is it just possible that Shakuri figured his cousin, in Corpus Christi, TX, with the ability to go over the border to Mexico, could in fact get something for him and some other hypocrites in the Qods that might be a bit more difficult to get in Iran...like drugs? A large amount of drugs?
I'm thinking this was a drug deal to begin with, and this mental case Arbabsiar started talking about spy games and such to his contact who turns out to be a DEA informant. The first contact between Arbabsiar and CS-1 was helpfully not recorded, so what he originally went to CS-1 for is dropped down the memory hole, in favor of this more interesting narrative of "kidnap - shoot -- blow up and kill lots of people" sequence.
Once however this fellow started talking about spy games, the DEA agent gets the FBI involved, who are always itching to create a new "plot" that they can foil and look like heroes. I think the Feds simply had CS-1 help Arbabsiar build the story further and further. It's quite notable that the complaint is an amended complaint, not the original. What was in the original, I'd like to know.
Now, this bizzare case that reads more like a cheap spy novel is being used as grounds for really turning the screws to Iran. The President and the Vice President are going on about "no option off the table" in dealing with Iran, Hillary Clinton is thundeirng about reprecussions, etc etc. The whole world is supposed to now unite against Iran due to this dastardly act that is so out of character with the Qods I can't even think of a good analogy.
This doesn't mean that the USA will go to war with Iran immediately, but in my opinion, this is just one more brick the road to what the War Party really wants: armed conflict with Iran. I also think that this case will exist just long enough to get the public fired up, and then go down the memory hole as well. I seriously never expect this will go to a trial, where the "evidence" as it is could be brought to the light of day. Rather, as he has already "confessed," expect that Mr. Arbabisar will be held, plead guilty, and be sentenced to somewhere far away where he can't talk to the media personally. Having done his job for the War Party, he can stay safely behind bars.
The alleged plot runs like this, according to the Department of Justice narrative: The evil Muslims in Iran decide to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. This job is going to be on US soil in a grand, terrorist fashion, provoking two acts of war (with the US and the Saudis) and have very questionable value to the interests of Iran. But no matter -- these are, after all, the "Mad Mullahs" of Iran, who want to blow up Israel with nukes, so anything is possible.
In order to facilitate their masterstroke, the Qods (the Revolutionary Guard of Iran, the secret police/espionage unit) decides to bankroll a certain Manssor Arbabsiar, a failed used car saleman in Texas with a string of other failed businesses and a minor criminal record. In a profile of this Terrorist Mastermind, his former acquaintences have the following to say about him:
“He was pretty disorganized, always losing things like keys, titles, probably a thousand cellphones,” said David Tomscha, an Aransas Pass businessman who ran a used-car lot with Arbabsiar. “He wasn't meticulous with taking care of things.
”Tom Hosseini, an Iranian whose friendship with Arbabsiar dates back 30 years, went as far as calling Arbabsiar “a joke.” Thee two were roommates at what's now Texas A&M University-Kingsville, but Arbabsiar dropped out after two semesters and finished his degree in Louisiana. It was Hosseini who nicknamed Arbabsiar “Jack,” for the quantities of Jack Daniel's whiskey Arbabsiar would drink.
Ah! But he must be one of those crazy, fanatic Muslims that love to blow things up, including themselves, for Allah, right? Is this guy the next Osama bin-Ladin in terms of his religoius fervor? Well not quite:
“He couldn't even pray, doesn't know how to fast. He used to drink, smoke pot, go with the prostitutes,” Hosseini said, laughing with a clerk at his market in downtown Corpus Christi. “His first wife left him because he would lose his keys every other day. ... This guy is not a mastermind.”
In 1983, Arbabsiar was attacked and stabbed 32 times and left for dead, spending six months in the hospital. This must have had an impact on his overall health, including his mental capacities. Apparently this guy couldn't keep track of his keys or his cell phone. He would on a regular basis lose titles for the cars in his business -- no wonder it went broke -- and may have very well been suffering from some kind of mental problem. Just the kind of person that the Qods would recruit to mastermind a terror activity on American soil right?
I beg to differ on that. The Iranians may be a bit over the top, but at the same time the Qods does know what it's doing, and this guy seems to be the exact opposite of the type of person they would want for such a sensitive operation. However, as we will see later, it's quite the type of person that our government might very well want to get their hands on.
Anyway, it gets a lot worse. The Qods, now with the fanatical mastermind Arbabsiar in their pay, order him to get in contact with the Mexican cartels to do the hit. If the idea that the Iranians are going to get a jackass in their employ to commit a masterstroke doesn't send your BS meter up to "high", the idea that they would want the Mexican Cartels in on the job should really empty the bucket of any credibility.
It's well known around the world that the Mexican Cartels are a bunch of criminal thugs with no morals. The idea that the Qods would get this scatterbrained moron to hire the Mexican Cartel Las Zetas to do a hit for them, on American soil, strikes any right thinking person as utterly incredulous. As Gary Sick, at the Middle East Instittue at Columbia University had to say:
"It is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions. In this instance, they allegedly relied on at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and U.S. intelligence agents. Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted forutter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft, e.g.discussing an ultra-covert operation on an open international line between Iran and the U.S. Yet that is what happened here."
Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst with the Congressional Research Office, concurs:
"There is simply no precedent - or even reasonable rationale - for Iran working any plot, no matter where located, through a non-Muslim proxy such as Mexican drug gangs. No one high up in the Quds, the I.R.G.C. command, the Supreme National Security Committee, or anywhere else in the Iranian chain of command would possibly trust that such a plot could be kept secret or carried out properly by the Mexican drug people. They absolutely would not trust such a thing to them, given Iran’s undoubted assumption that the Mexicans are penetrated by the D.E.A. and F.B.I. and A.T.F., etc - and indeed this plot was revealed by just such a U.S. informant….
"Are we to believe that this Texas car seller was a Quds sleeper agent for many years resident in the U.S.? Ridiculous. They (the Iranian command system) never ever use such has-beens or loosely connected people for sensitive plots such as this."
But no matter, the official narrative has been given and that's all our government worshpping press needs.
Anyway, this alleged person with "strong contacts" in the Mexican Mafia goes to hire a member of Las Zetas, who rather helpfully turns out to be an informant working for the DEA. One would think that if Mssr. Arbabisar were such a well connected person, he wouldn't run right into the DEA man in the field -- but that's exactly what happened.
As the official narrative goes, Mr. Arbabisar offered to pay this person, known as "CS-1" in the indictment, $1.5US Million to do the hit. "CS-1" then began feeding him ideas for how to do it, eventually working up to blowing up a ficticious restaurant which the Saudi Ambassador was allegedly known to frequent. Mr. Arbabisar, who in the indictment can't seem to figure out if he's getting money from a "colonel" or a "general" in Iran, then allegedly says "kill just him if you can, but if you have to blow up everyone in the place, f**k them."
Two payments of over $49,000 each are wired from a "foreign source" (not named in the criminal complaint) to Chase Manhattan Bank, as a down payment for the hit job. What was the source of this funding? The only other "evidence" that the FBI has of any real note is a series of conversations, over an open line, with Arbabisar's cousin (either a "general" or a "colonel" who Arbabisar told CS-1 was "on CNN" -- a lie).
Several things are really odd about this whole thing. As we see in the criminal complaint, Arbabisar says he was initially contacted by his cousin Gholam Shakuri to kidnap, not murder, the Saudi Ambassador. But when he went to Mexico to meet "CS-1" the plot turned to a murder of the Ambassador. Why would this suddenly turn into a murder when it seems this "high ranking member of the Qods" wanted a kidnapping?
Allegedly, Arbabisar went to Iran and met with his cousin Shakuri and a second "high ranking members of the Qods." It was there he was vetted with being the middleman between the Qods and Las Zetas. The agreed upon word for the assassination was "Chevrolet." However, when Arbabisar was aressed and confessed, he made phone calls to Shakuri (on an open line -- this "high ranking member of the Qods" must be a total idiot), where they used two terms, "Chevrolet" and "the Building". This discussion is very interesting to say the least:
[Arbabsiar] I wanted to tell you, the Chevrolet is ready, it’s ready, uh, to be done. I should continue, right?
[Shakuri] Yes, yes, yes. You mean you are buying all of it?
[Arbabsiar] I don’t know for now, it’s ready, okay?
[Shakuri] So buy it, buy it.
[Arbabsiar] Buy it? Okay.
[Shakuri] Buy it, yes, buy all of it.
[Arbabsiar] this boy wants, uh, some money, he wants some expenditure. What do you say, should we give him some more? He wants another 50.
[Shakuri] With you, no, you … that amount is fine. [UI] give him the rest. He should buy the car for us first. [ellipsis original]
[Shakuri] Do it quickly, it’s late, just buy it for me and bring it already.
"Buy it" and "bring it"...later on in the taped conversation, Shakuri wants to know if they are indeed going to get "the merchandice."
Now, call me crazy, but what would people go to the Mexican Mafia for in reality? Would the Qods go to them to stage a brazen attack on a diplomat's life in a country just looking for a reason to lob a few cruise missles their way? Or...is it just possible that Shakuri figured his cousin, in Corpus Christi, TX, with the ability to go over the border to Mexico, could in fact get something for him and some other hypocrites in the Qods that might be a bit more difficult to get in Iran...like drugs? A large amount of drugs?
I'm thinking this was a drug deal to begin with, and this mental case Arbabsiar started talking about spy games and such to his contact who turns out to be a DEA informant. The first contact between Arbabsiar and CS-1 was helpfully not recorded, so what he originally went to CS-1 for is dropped down the memory hole, in favor of this more interesting narrative of "kidnap - shoot -- blow up and kill lots of people" sequence.
Once however this fellow started talking about spy games, the DEA agent gets the FBI involved, who are always itching to create a new "plot" that they can foil and look like heroes. I think the Feds simply had CS-1 help Arbabsiar build the story further and further. It's quite notable that the complaint is an amended complaint, not the original. What was in the original, I'd like to know.
Now, this bizzare case that reads more like a cheap spy novel is being used as grounds for really turning the screws to Iran. The President and the Vice President are going on about "no option off the table" in dealing with Iran, Hillary Clinton is thundeirng about reprecussions, etc etc. The whole world is supposed to now unite against Iran due to this dastardly act that is so out of character with the Qods I can't even think of a good analogy.
This doesn't mean that the USA will go to war with Iran immediately, but in my opinion, this is just one more brick the road to what the War Party really wants: armed conflict with Iran. I also think that this case will exist just long enough to get the public fired up, and then go down the memory hole as well. I seriously never expect this will go to a trial, where the "evidence" as it is could be brought to the light of day. Rather, as he has already "confessed," expect that Mr. Arbabisar will be held, plead guilty, and be sentenced to somewhere far away where he can't talk to the media personally. Having done his job for the War Party, he can stay safely behind bars.