Michael Purcell: Iranian plot in US is hard to believe

MANY Western experts on Iran are sceptical about the accusations made by Washington that Tehran planned to kill Saudi Arabia’s US ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, in a US restaurant, using an Iranian-American car dealer and a Mexican drugs cartel.

Iran has not carried out a political murder in the US since 1980 when an African-American convert to Islam, Daoud Salahuddin, killed the former press attaché at the Iranian embassy in a Washington suburb.

Sceptics say the US has yet to explain Iran’s motive for hatching such an inflammatory plot that, if successful, would have brought dire retribution.

“I’m doubtful about all this because it doesn’t fit with Iran’s modus operandi or its foreign policy,” a European former ambassador to Iran said. “Why would Iran take such a high-level risk in killing a Saudi when that would simply drive up tensions in the region,” the envoy, who requested anonymity, said in a telephone interview. “And above all, why do it in America, thus exacerbating the problems Iran already has with a virulent enemy?”

Also unanswered is why Iran’s sophisticated Quds Force, which allegedly planned the assassination, would use an Iranian-American with a reported criminal record for what would have been its boldest yet operation.

And given that the US has warned it is holding Iran accountable, what evidence is there that orders for the elaborate, alleged plot came directly from the upper echelons of the Iranian regime?

Those less sceptical of Washington’s intentions ask why the Obama administration would want to fabricate such accusations against Iran.

The Quds Force is the elite 5,000-strong external operations unit of Iran’s 150,000-member Republican Guard. Al-Quds means Jerusalem in Arabic.

It has long been operational in Lebanon and is said to be active in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But a venture on US soil would be a first. The assassination plot suspects are Manssuor Arbabsiar, 56, who was arrested on 29 September in New York, and Gholam Shakuri, said to be a member of the Quds Force.

US officials have themselves acknowledged the details of the elaborate plot smack of a Hollywood script, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jesting: “Nobody could make that up, right?”

But they insist it is a case of truth being stranger than fiction. In off-the-record briefings to US media, unnamed law enforcement officials attributed the amateurish nature of the plot to Iran’s relative inexperience in carrying out covert operations in the US.

They argued that a Mexican drug cartel would give Iran “deniability” while serving as a useful proxy in the US where the Iranians do not have an infrastructure. The officials said they believed Iran hoped the attack would be blamed on al-Qaeda. Even if the US charges are true, analysts in Iran doubt president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew of the plot, given that the Revolutionary Guard has withdrawn its support for him. It has sided with his hardline clerical opponents in a bitter and protracted power struggle.

The president’s opponents accuse him of wanting to mend ties with the US as he knows it would go down well with Iran’s young electorate. This has led to suspicions that the plot was orchestrated by the Revolutionary Guard – and was meant to be discovered by US intelligence – to torpedo any covert attempt by Mr Ahmadinejad to mend ties with the “Great Satan”.

The Quds Force and Revolutionary Guard are loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who, despite his lurid anti-American rhetoric, is a cautious pragmatist. He knows his regime cannot afford a war against the US.

The European former ambassador to Iran said it was “nonsense” to suggest that the risky plot had anything to do with the antagonism between Mr Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader.