by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.Com
Terror and carnage in Washington, D.C., with the Saudi ambassador assassinated by a bomb while dining at a restaurant packed with 100-150 other customers, possibly including a number of senators. That’s what “elements” of Iran’s government allegedly had planned for this autumn, according to court documents and press statements released Tuesday by U.S. authorities.
Americans are just now learning some of the details of this Iranian terror plot, in connection with charges brought against American-Iranian dual national Manssor Arbabsiar, now under arrest in New York. The criminal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, provides 21 pages of horrifying material, much of it amassed with the help of a paid undercover informant, who posed as an associate of the unnamed Mexican drug cartel the Iranians thought they had recruited for the hit (Barry Rubin, in a terrific Pajamas post, on what it all means, links to the complaint). The complaint lays out a trail in which Arbabsiar, a naturalized American living in Texas, conspired with members of Iran’s Quds Force, an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, to orchestrate the assassination on American soil of the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The plot went all the way to the top of the Quds Force, and involved hiring the services of a violent Mexican drug cartel to use explosives to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington. If that succeeded, it was to be followed by other terrorist jobs. There are lots of fascinating details, including such trivia as the use of a code-name, “Chevrolet,” for the assassination plot; and such monstrosities as Arbabsiar’s comment to a U.S. undercover source that his Iranian co-conspirators wanted the Saudi ambassador killed, and if 100 bystanders were killed as well, “f–k ‘em.”
Yet the criminal complaint also includes a caveat: “No attempt has been made to set forth the complete factual history of this investigation or all of its details.”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY @ ROSETT REPORT @ PAJAMASMEDIA.COM