Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Oct 14, 2011 12:28 am

On all my mainstream forums over here, nobody believes it either. We've come a long way, I guess. These are mostly people who believe Afghanistan was justified and Iraq was an honest mistake - but this latest caper is a joke too far.
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby Hammer of Los » Fri Oct 14, 2011 4:46 am

The way it is now, 90 percent of the people could know it's a lie, but because of the media coverage, they ASSUME that most everybody else believes the lie. Which is one of the most powerful aspects of the media.


I stopped assuming that a long time ago.

I doubt as many people believe the media as the folk in the media suppose.

But whilst they are left without alternative, more reliable sources, what good does it do them?

Thank heavens for the internet!

They now have those sources, so long as they can develop a little discernment.

But wasn't that what was always required?

We are all connected.

We are all going to learn much.

Some lessons are long overdue.
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Whack jobs @ FOX/GOP call Obama's bluff...

Postby MinM » Fri Oct 14, 2011 8:40 am

Image
Ed Henry Clashes With Obama At White House Press Conference
First Posted: 10/13/11 02:16 PM ET Updated: 10/14/11 12:10 AM ET

Fox News Chief White House Correspondent Ed Henry experienced a tense moment with President Obama during a Thursday press conference. The President held a joint press conference with Lee Myung-Bak, President of South Korea. Ed Henry had the first question of the conference and asked Obama if he considered the alleged Iranian assassination plot to be "an act of war."

Henry decided to quote a Mitt Romney statement from last week when asking for the President's plans to address Iran's alleged terror plot. Henry asked the President "what specific steps will you take to hold Iran accountable? Especially when Mitt Romney charged last week, quote, 'If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your President. You have that president today.'"

Obama paused and answered, "Well I didn't know that you were the spokesperson for Mitt Romney," and smiled down at Henry.

Henry discussed the exchange with Megyn Kelly on her show and defended his decision to quote Mitt Romney in his question. “I was trying to put it in the broader context of not just Mitt Romney, but there are a lot of Republicans out there who would charge that this president leads from behind," he said. "...Instead, he decided to go after me a little bit."

Henry has clashed repeatedly with Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/1 ... 09331.html

Could they force his hand?
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 14, 2011 11:34 am

^^^^^^ :wink:

Will the Washington Bomb Plot Force Obama into War with Iran?
Posted by Tony Karon Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 8:36 pm
62 Comments • Related Topics: France, Hizballah, iran, Middle East, Obama, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, U.K., U.S. , ambassador, Arbabsia, assassination, Biden, Clinton, Khamenei, plot, Quds, sanctions, Tehran, Terror, Washington

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a speech under portraits of Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, left, and the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, before the 22nd anniversary of Khomeini's death on June 3, 2011 (Photo: Behrouz Mehri / AFP / Getty Images)

"We are not talking to Iran, so we don't understand each other," outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last month. "If something happens, it's virtually assured that we won't get it right — that there will be miscalculation, which could be extremely dangerous in that part of the world."

Mullen's warning of the perils arising from the two sides' inability to communicate and understand each other's intentions — "Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had links to the Soviet Union" — seems especially prescient amid the fallout from the alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, blamed by the U.S. on "elements of the Iranian government." Claims that officials within the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps initiated a bizarre scheme via an Iranian-American used-car salesman — described by his former business partner as "a sort of hustler" — to enlist the services of a Mexican drug gang for a terrorism strike in the U.S. capital have been seized on by the Administration to press for tougher international action against Tehran.

"We see this as a chance to go out to capitals and around the world and talk to allies and partners about what the Iranians tried to do," an unnamed official told the Washington Post. "We're going to use this to isolate them to the maximum extent possible." Vice President Joe Biden added, darkly, that when it came to responding to Iran's behavior, "nothing has been taken off the table."

U.S. officials fanned out on Wednesday to enlist the support of foreign governments for further sanctions. (The U.S. has banned Iran's airline from operating in the U.S. and has frozen its assets.) And the Administration plans to approach the U.N. Security Council, seeking action to "hold Iran accountable" over the plot. While Britain and France have signaled support, it's difficult to imagine that the revelations will persuade countries skeptical of the U.S.'s Iran policy to change their positions. As National Iranian American Council President Trita Parsi tells TIME, "They have to be sure the evidence of involvement by the government of Iran is very solid, because they can't afford another Colin Powell moment at the Security Council." (The former Secretary of State briefed the council in February 2003 on U.S. claims about Iraq's weapons programs, on which it justified its invasion, but the claims later proved to be unfounded.) "And the evidentiary bar is going to be set pretty high at the Security Council precisely because of the Colin Powell experience," Parsi adds.

Accepting at face value the claim that this plot was the work of the Iranian government requires a suspension of disbelief. "This plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures," wrote Gary Sick, a former National Security Council Iran aide now at Columbia University. Despite its animus toward the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, Iran has always relied on trusted proxies like Hizballah to carry out assassinations, giving Tehran plausible deniability. "Iran has never conducted — or apparently even attempted — an assassination or a bombing inside the U.S.," Sick noted. "And 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."

Terrorism attacks have long been part of Iran's playbook in its three-decade battle for regional supremacy with Saudi Arabia, and that battle has intensified in recent years as the two sides have played out proxy wars in Iraq and Lebanon, while Tehran's key Arab ally, Syria, has been in mortal danger, and the Saudis have flexed their muscles by cracking down violently on Bahrain's Shi'ite majority and its own Shi'ite minority. Riyadh appears to be orchestrating events in Yemen too.

But Iran-Saudi tensions don't explain the choice of Washington as the venue for an attack. The ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, is not a key player in the Saudi regime. And not only is the U.S. capital probably one of the world's better-protected cities since 9/11, but an act of terrorism there would certainly provoke retaliation by the Americans. The Washington bomb plot makes sense only if the goal was, in fact, to provoke the U.S. into attacking Iran.

Some have suggested that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei might do just that, seeing a confrontation with the U.S. threat as a way of consolidating his regime. But the challenge of the Green Movement has been largely suppressed, for now, and even the uppity President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has had his wings clipped. It's not hard to see why so many Iran watchers doubt that Khamenei would have signed off on such a harebrained scheme, even if some speculate that a rogue faction within the Quds Force may have been responsible.

But Tehran is not the only power center whose hard-liners might like to provoke an outbreak of hostilities between Iran and the U.S., prompting further speculation abroad over the nature and possible authorship of the plot.

Details of the scheme raise even more doubts: the deadly professionals of the Quds Force are said to have broken with the habit of using either their own disciplined professionals or trusted proxies like Hizballah, with plenty of cutouts and plausible deniability. Instead, they ostensibly turned to a used-car salesman to engage the services of a Mexican drug gang with no history of mounting attacks outside of Mexican borders. My colleague Tim Padgett has highlighted the absurdity of the idea that the Zetas, a multibillion-dollar criminal operation, would be willing to court the wrath of the U.S. through an act of war in Washington, and for a measly $1.5 million.

If the conception of the plot was hokey, the tradecraft — communications by phone, money wired from a Quds Force bank account — wasn't worthy of the name.

"You can't make this stuff up," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But unfortunately, since the Iraq invasion, much of the international community is unlikely to easily accept claims made by Washington against rival states whose regimes it would like to be rid of.

Still, even though the plot was thwarted, it could yet provoke an escalation, or even a confrontation, between the U.S. and Iran. The poisoning of the atmosphere will, in all likelihood, further dim the already diminished hopes for any diplomatic progress on the nuclear standoff. And if the Administration fails to win support for a significant escalation of sanctions or other form of punishment for the Tehran regime after presenting evidence of the latest allegations of Iranian malfeasance, the ball will land back in Obama's court. Having made the case that Iran crossed a red line, he will be under pressure to act — or risk entering a highly polarized election season haunted by a "soft on Iran" charge.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 14, 2011 11:47 am

Iranian plot included Israeli embassy in Argentina
October 14, 2011

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) -- An Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States, thwarted earlier this week, also involved an attack the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires.

American-Iranian Manssor Arbabsiar, arrested Oct. 11in the Saudi ambassador murder plot, was also planning an attack against the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia in Buenos Aires, although U.S. officials did not state it specifically, according to reports.

Acting head of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Ángel Barman, told JTA that “it´s not surprising that Iran is suspected of committing a new attack.”

After hearing the news that FBI broke up a series of terrorist attacks involving Iranian targets in Argentina, AMIA said in a statement that “whoever is unpunished, reoffends.” The statement refers to the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in which 85 were killed and hundreds injured. Argentina has accused Iran of ordering the bombing, which it says was carried out by the Hezbollah terrorist organization.

“This only shows the impunity with which Iran operates given its current lack of cooperation to clarify the AMIA bombing, a pending task that leaves the possibility of a third attack in Argentina open," according to the AMIA.

"I'm not surprised by the fact that Iran´s terrorist attack was ready and organized, because they realized that nothing happens, they can kill and do it again.” Barman told Argentinean TV channel C5N.

In a ceremony for the “Argentine Diplomats Day” on Oct. 11, Foreign Minister, Héctor Timerman highlighted the "openness” of the Argentinean Government toward Iran after Iran announced recently that it would cooperate with Argentina to bring the AMIA bombers to justice.

“I mean the attitude of openness that we chose at the announcement of cooperation from Iran over the AMIA bombing. ... Because the warrants issued by Interpol against of those accused of heinous attack remain firm," Timerman said hours before Iranian intention of attacking embassies in Argentina was made public.

Sergio Witis, vice-president of DAIA, Argentine Jewry’s primary umbrella organization, said that “this is a matter of concern, because it affects the safety of all Argentineans. It doesn't surprise us that Iran stands behind this kind of plan,” Witis told C5N.

The United States reportedly informed the Argentinean government about the Iranian terrorist plan. “Argentina was one of the countries called by the Undersecretary for Political Affairs and Deputy Secretary of State William Burns” to talk about this issue, said a U.S. spokesperson.

At the same time, Clarín Newspaper was told by upper echelon sources that, in parallel, that Charge d'Affaires of the U.S. embassy in Argentina and key man for its diplomatic headquarters, Jefferson Brown, was in Argentina's Foreign Ministry this week to discuss details of the indictment that the U.S. Attorney filed against two Iranian citizens.

It was also confirmed through diplomatic sources that Argentina appears in the investigations initiated by the FBI and the DEA, as well as other countries whose names were not revealed. The potential attack on the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia in Argentina was mentioned initially by ABC News on Oct. 11, and the following day on the front page of the New York Times.

Contacted by JTA, the spokesperson of Israeli embassy in Argentina would not comment about the issue. Israel's embassy in Argentina was attacked on March 17, 1992, leaving 29 civilians dead and 242 additional injured.

Argentina has the largest population of Jews in Latin America.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby elfismiles » Fri Oct 14, 2011 1:13 pm

Obama Claims Secret 'Proof' of Iran Assassination Plot
Analysts See Needlessly Convoluted Plot as Doubtful
by Jason Ditz, October 13, 2011

In the two days since the Obama Administration announced the convoluted Iranian assassination plot against a Saudi Ambassador, the head-scratching has turned into open scoffing among many top experts in the region, who say the plot is just too ridiculous to be real.

At its core, the whole plot, from the used-car dealer to the Mexican drug cartel, just rings hollow. Iran stood to gain little from a DC attack but had much to lose, whether the plot succeeded or failed, as it would only drive the US and Saudi Arabia closer together and give the US yet more excuses to move against Iran.

Predictably, that’s exactly what has happened, with the Obama Administration hawkish in their threats against Iran. But is the allegation even true? Officials were admitting yesterday that they didn’t have any direct evidence to that effect, but that didn’t seem to stop the rhetoric.

And its not like the administration is ever consistent in their claims, as President Obama is now insisting he has “proof” that the plot is real. This proof, as with their “proof” against Iran’s nuclear program and their “proof” against Pakistan’s government, exists only as a talking point, and will doubtlessly never be shown to the public.

Which seems to be good enough for most US allies, as in the past. Instead of questioning why Iran would do something seemingly designed only to give President Obama an excuse to invade, foreign officials are rallying behind the US calls to “punish” Iran in some vague non-specific manner.

Obama’s secret (and likely mythical) proof will likely do little to placate foreign policy analysts, but for officials the policy is already set, and it is to further escalate hostilities with Iran. The only question that remains is how much escalation the voters will tolerate.

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/10/13/obam ... tion-plot/




Philip Giraldi

October 13, 2011| Iran, Saudi Arabia | Scott Horton




Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the inside information on the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US; indications that the plot was legitimate but an amateurish rogue operation – not the work of Iran’s government; escalating talk of “all options on the table” for military retaliation against Iran; and why it’s never a good sign when Saudi Arabia and Israel agree on a common regional enemy.

MP3 here. (18:30)
http://dissentradio.com/radio/11_10_12_giraldi.mp3

http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/10/13/philip-giraldi-51/


Scott just interviewed Flynt Leverett on the Iran issue. Should be posted tomorrow.

Interesting ... it appears that CNN has scrubbed Flynt's editorial...

Iranian 'plots' and American hubris -CNN.
www.cnn.com/2011/10/13/opinion/iran-us-plot-strategy/
14 hours ago – Calls by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "unite the world in the isolation of and dealing with the Iranians," in ...

But it is still here http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/13/opini ... an-hubris/


Iranian 'plots' and American hubris
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leveret
October 13, 2011 -- Updated 1806 GMT (0206 HKT)

Editor's note: Flynt Leverett teaches international affairs at Penn State and is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Hillary Mann Leverett teaches U.S. foreign policy at American University and is CEO of a political risk consultancy. Together, they write The Race for Iran. They both held senior positions on Middle East policy at the State Department and National Security Council.

(CNN) -- Calls by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary Hillary Clinton to "unite the world in the isolation of and dealing with the Iranians," in response to an alleged Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia's Ambassador in Washington, reflect a hubristic misapprehension of reality.

The Obama Administration mistakenly believes it can exploit the accusations for strategic advantage. In fact, they are likely to play to Iran's advantage, not America's.

The U.S. foreign policy community profoundly misunderstands the Islamic Republic's national security strategy. The Islamic Republic seeks to defend itself not primarily by conventional military power, in which it is deficient, but by forging ties to proxy allies around the region-actors with the ability to affect on-the-ground outcomes in key regional settings who are inclined to cooperate with Tehran.

In some cases, these actors are discrete political movements, often with paramilitary capabilities, for example, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shia political parties-cum-militias in Iraq.

In other situations, Tehran sees public opinion as its chief ally. By contrasting some regimes' cooperation with the United States and Israel with its own posture of "resistance" to American and Israeli ambitions to regional hegemony, Tehran cultivates "soft power" across the Middle East.

Iran conceives its strategy, especially in a period of relative decline in America's standing, as one that constrains unfriendly regimes in the short term and undermines them in the longer term. Over the last decade, it has helped the Islamic Republic reap significant political and strategic gains in important theaters across the Middle East-Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories.

With the advent of the Arab awakening at the end of last year, Iranian decision-makers are confident that some Arab states' shift toward governments more reflective of their peoples' attitudes and concerns-and, hence, more inclined to pursue more independent foreign policies vis-à-vis the United States and Israel-will work to Iran's advantage.

Iranian policymakers correctly calculated that virtually any successor to Saddam Hussein 's regime in Iraq would be a net positive for Iranian interests. Now, they calculate that a successor to the Mubarak regime in Egypt is bound to be less enthusiastic about strategic cooperation with the United States and Israel and more receptive to Iran's message of resistance.

Iran's strategy toward Saudi Arabia runs very much along these lines. Tehran's approach is to highlight Saudi collusion with Washington and (at least indirectly) with Israel on important regional issues, thereby attracting support from ordinary Saudis-not just Saudi Shia but also Sunnis who dislike their government's pro-American stance.

In the short term, Iran seeks to constrain the Saudi government from cooperating in military strikes or other coercive actions against it by making this an unpopular prospect for much of the Saudi population.

In the longer term, Iran is working to transform the regional balance of power from one in which the United States, the Saudis, and other American allies dominate to one in which American, Israeli, and Saudi influence is marginalized by the diplomatic realignment of Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Turkey, post-Saddam Iraq, and now Egypt.

The Saudi leadership tries to push back by portraying Iran as an "alien", Shia/Persian element in its environment. At times, this helps the Kingdom hold the line against the Islamic Republic's soft power offensive. But the long-term trend is toward rising Iranian influence. In this context, the notion of an Iranian government plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States simply has no logic.

History also suggests we treat the Obama Administration's claims of Iranian government complicity with deep skepticism.

For eight years, during 1980-1988, the fledgling Islamic Republic had to defend itself against a war of aggression launched by Saddam Hussein -- a war of aggression financed primarily by Saudi Arabia. Nearly 300,000 Iranians were killed in that war. But, during the entire conflict, the Iranian government never targeted a single Saudi anywhere in the world.

This is not because the Islamic Republic loves the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is because Iran's national security strategy ultimately depends on appealing to the Saudi public not to support attacks against Iran, by harnessing popular anger over Israeli actions and U.S. overreach in the war on terror.

Killing a Saudi Ambassador would have exactly the opposite effect. Whatever Mansour Ababsiar and his cousin may have talked about, it is wholly implausible that the Iranian leadership decided that this was a smart thing to do.

The Obama Administration's calls for more concerted action against Iran will ultimately backfire-because they will be seen in most of the Muslim world (outside Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab monarchies closely linked to Saudi Arabia) as the United States yet again leveling dubious life-and-death charges as the pretext to contain or even eliminate another Muslim power.

President Obama, his advisers, and all Americans need to ask themselves if this is really the time to bring the United States even closer to another Middle East war fought in blind defiance of the region's strategic realities.



The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett.


http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/13/opini ... an-hubris/

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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Oct 15, 2011 9:04 am

WikiLeaks Cable Hints At Motive For Alleged Iran Plot

by Mike Shuster

Audio for this story from Weekend Edition Saturday will be available at approx. 12:00 p.m. ET

Transcript


An alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., Adel al-Jubeir (shown here in 2004), may have been motivated by tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but also could underscore an internal power struggle.
Enlarge Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

An alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., Adel al-Jubeir (shown here in 2004), may have been motivated by tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but also could underscore an internal power struggle.

text size A A A
October 15, 2011

The disclosure of an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in the U.S. is certain to worsen relations between Riyadh and Tehran, despite the baffling and improbable details that have emerged so far.

But relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been deteriorating for some years now, with growing hostility bubbling just below the surface. In that context, the plot may make more sense than is immediately apparent.

As soon as the plot was disclosed, Saudi officialdom was calling for some kind of retaliation. Speaking earlier this week in London, Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and former head of Saudi intelligence for many years, signaled what the Saudi government now expects from Tehran.

"The burden of proof and the amount of evidence on the case is overwhelming, and clearly shows official Iranian responsibility for it. This is unacceptable and something that in the authority in Iran, somebody will have to pay a price," he said.

Still, many analysts have wondered why the target of the plot was the current Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Adel al-Jubeir.

The answer may lie in the WikiLeaks documents, says Jonathan Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

In fact in many ways this [plot] plays into the Saudi narrative of Iranian belligerency and gangsterism and disruptiveness in the politics of the Middle East.

- Nader Hashemi, University of Denver

"It is conceivable to me that somebody saw some of the comments that the ambassador made in WikiLeaks about Iran that he attributed to the king and said the way to do this is we could punish the ambassador," he says.

Saudi-Iran Hostilities

In a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh to the State Department — dated April 20, 2008, and made public earlier this year — Jubeir, who is close to Saudi King Abdullah, made reference to the king's frequent exhortations to the U.S. to attack Iran. Then Jubeir used a particularly evocative phrase, says Alterman.

"Ambassador Jubeir told American officials that the king of Saudi Arabia told you to 'cut off the head of the snake.' That refers to a potential attack in Iran," Alterman says.

From Tehran that could have been seen as encouragement to assassinate the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Still, says Alterman, if the Iranians had really wanted to retaliate for those remarks, they could have conceived of a much more effective operation.

"If the Iranians wanted to carry out a sophisticated plot against people in the United States or elsewhere, they can and they have. They haven't done it for decades. When they did it, they've done it with much more skill than seems to be connected to this plot," he says.

Nader Hashemi, an Iran analyst at the University of Denver, is equally baffled by the plot's alleged details. But he, too, argues there is a real context of mutual hostility.

[Ahmadinejad's camp has] sent many signals that they want to re-establish the relation with the United States. But the opposite camp in the Iran power hierarchy that is led by Ayatollah Khamenei doesn't want it.

- says Muhammad Sahimi, University of Southern California

"In fact in many ways this plays into the Saudi narrative of Iranian belligerency and gangsterism and disruptiveness in the politics of the Middle East," Hashemi says.

But if this was indeed a real plot meant to end in murder and mayhem in Washington, Hashemi says Iran almost certainly would face military retaliation.

"I just don't see how the Islamic Republic of Iran benefits from effectively providing a casus belli for the United States to attack it because of a particular plot or assassination attempt on its soil, or by increasing regional tensions with Saudi Arabia," he says.

Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran have been rivals in the Middle East ever since Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. There was a short-lived thaw in the 1990s, but Saudi hostility increased when the U.S. invasion of Iraq led to an Iranian-backed Shiite government in Baghdad. Iranian hostility spiked this year when Saudi soldiers were dispatched to put down a Shiite challenge to Bahrain's Sunni king, notes Hashemi.

"Things are at a very dangerous and critical point. The level of animosity and rhetoric has really reached new heights," he says.

Iranian President, Supreme Leader At Odds

There is one other possible factor: how the plot may fit into Iran's domestic turmoil.

For much of the last year, the rivalry between Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, and Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, has become more and more nasty, and potentially dangerous.

Ahmadinejad and his small circle of advisers have made it clear they would like to see relations with the U.S. improve, says Muhammad Sahimi, of the University of Southern California.

"They have sent many signals that they want to re-establish the relation with the United States. But the opposite camp in the Iran power hierarchy that is led by Ayatollah Khamenei doesn't want it," Sahimi says.

The Obama administration has not responded to these signals, at least not publicly. After the disclosure of this plot, that option is almost certainly dead. Take, for instance, this speech Wednesday by Secretary of State Clinton in Washington.

"We will work closely with our international partners to increase Iran's isolation and the pressure on its government," she said.

How this will play out internationally is impossible to predict, but it is safe to say with Iran's government already feeling vulnerable — some say paranoid — there are many more shoes to drop before the full impact of the ambassador plot is known.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby DrVolin » Sat Oct 15, 2011 10:54 am

Once again, wikileaks to the rescue.
all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

--Guns and Roses
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby fruhmenschen » Sat Oct 15, 2011 11:50 am

see link below for full story
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun ... ot-murder/

Iranian Terror Mastermind Likely Wanted Drug Deal, Not Murder – OpEd

Written by: Richard Silverstein

October 15, 2011

Gareth Porter published an important story about the alleged Iran terror plot. In it he notes that nowhere in the Justice Department criminal complaint does it say that Arbabsiar ever agreed to assassinate anyone. In fact, it is the DEA agent who repeatedly attempts to introduce and re-introduce the notion of perpetrating an act of terror. At no point do the charges say the Iranian ever suggested this or agreed to it.

Porter says that what’s much more likely is that the alleged terror suspect was first drawn into the web by the prospect of doing a drug deal:

On May 24, when Arbabsiar 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.

…Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a “federal law enforcement official”, wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who “controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium”.

In fact, in today’s NY Times a reporter interviewed neighbors who noted that young people entered and exited the suspect’s house at all hours of the day and night. It made them think that drugs were being dealt there.

The IPS reporter notes that the IRG controls a huge volume of drug trafficking in nearby Afghanistan and that they have begun to ship heroin around the world including to Mexican drug cartels. It appears that the paid DEA informant, himself a drug dealer, first approached Arbabsiar not about an act of terror, but about a drug deal. The Iranian was only, as far as the records show, interested in doing a drug deal. He listened to the tales of the DEA agent only because he was being strung along to believe there was a drug deal in the making:

…The absence of any statement attributed to Arbabsiar imply that the Iranian- American said nothing about assassinating the Saudi ambassador except in response to suggestions by the informant, who was already part of an FBI undercover operation.

…Not a single quote from Arbabsiar shows that he agreed to assassinating the ambassador, much less proposed it, suggest[ing] that he was either non-committal or linking the issue to something else, such as the prospect of a major drug deal with the cartel.

Interestingly, the FBI complaint doesn’t mention any discussion about drugs. I wonder why?

This is not only entrapment, it is the government lying about the basic nature of the case. Manssor Arbabsiar appears to be a wannabe Texas drug dealer who had connections holding product via his cousin, who may or may not be affiliated with the IRG. That the IRG deals in drugs I have no doubt. But the claim that the IRG plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador or anyone remains about the lamest claim ever to come out of the Obama administration.





This article appeared at Tikun Olam
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun ... ot-murder/
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Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein is an author, journalist and blogger, with articles appearing in Haaretz, the Jewish Forward, Los Angeles Times, the Guardian’s Comment Is Free, Al Jazeera English, and Alternet. His work has also been in the Seattle Times, American Conservative Magazine, Beliefnet and Tikkun Magazine, where he is on the advisory board. Check out Silverstein's blog at Tikun Olam, one of the earliest liberal Jewish blogs, which he has maintained since February, 2003.
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Oct 15, 2011 7:44 pm

Patrick Cockburn: Iran had better watch its step now Obama's chasing votes
A fumbling Tehran-backed plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was dismissed as bizarre by the rest of the world. But the White House is taking it very seriously

Sunday, 16 October 2011

The plot in which an Iranian-American from Corpus Christi, Texas, notorious locally for his Clouseau-like dimwittedness, tries to hire a Mexican gangster to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington at the behest of the Iranian authorities has been greeted with incredulous hilarity across much of the world.

The allegations need to be taken seriously primarily because they show that the White House, by giving credence to them at the highest level, is seeking confrontation with Iran in the lead-up to next year's presidential election. It is shifting towards the Saudi position of seeing the hand of Iran behind its troubles in Iraq and the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain. The US is increasingly backing the Sunni side, and above all Saudi Arabia, in the struggle between Sunni and Shia which is escalating wherever the two communities live together.

The supposed conspiracy is bizarre even by the mendacious standards of stories pumped out by the Bush administration before 2003, purporting to show that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction. Manssor Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American who has lived for 30 years in the US, had a history of serial failure in small business ventures. He had a conviction for cheque fraud and a reputation for fumbling incompetence so great that his friends suspected he might have suffered brain damage when he was knifed and beaten up for flirting with Iranian-American women. But this man, with his rather sad history of personal and business failures, is suddenly appointed a frontline operator for Quds Force, the intelligence arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

He talks to a Mexican claiming links to Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel but who is, in fact, an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The charges subsequently made against Mr Arbabsiar suggest that US government agents may have turned his woolly-minded but aggressive ideas into a conspiracy to bomb the US capital. The plan to blow up 150 people in a Washington restaurant appears to have originated with a DEA agent as part of its "sting" operation.

Given the expertise, deviousness and secrecy of Iranian intelligence, such a conspiracy may appear unlikely but it is difficult to prove it never happened. When it comes to motive, however, what could Iran conceivably gain by choosing this moment to provoke the US by providing it with a case for war, as Washington would certainly have if such a conspiracy existed?

What makes the Arbabsiar plot so menacing is the way the administration has highlighted it. Far from downplaying it, they decided to treat the allegations as if they were proven facts. The conspiracy was gravely announced by Eric Holder, the US Attorney General, and publicly endorsed by President Obama and Hillary Clinton, his Secretary of the State. After such a public commitment it is going to be difficult for the US to back away.

The most likely motive for the Obama administration's vigorously expressed belief in the plot is that it is preparing the ground for the 2012 presidential election. Mr Obama's economic and social policies are failing and his only undiluted successes have been the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. By dramatising how he frustrated the fiendish plots of the Iranians, Mr Obama can present himself as the president who kept America safe, or at least protect his national security political flank from criticism by the Republicans.

Many of the mysteries of American foreign policy make perfect sense when related to the overriding need of those in power in Washington to get re-elected. In Iraq in 2003-04 and, to a lesser extent, in 2008 we journalists based there often derided US actions as foolish, not realising that they were directed not at Iraqis but at the American voter.

In 2004, in the face of real disaster on the ground, President Bush was able to persuade the US electorate that progress was being made in Iraq at a moment when everybody based there could see that the country was being torn apart by a war of extraordinary savagery.

Four years later the White House was able to persuade much of the US media that something close to a last-minute victory had been won through the "Surge". American reporters in Baghdad often knew different, but their home offices in New York decided that Iraq was a non-story. I remember one US TV news team, maintained in Baghdad at vast expense, lamenting that they had not been on air for 50 days before the presidential election.

But US electoral politics have real repercussions on the ground in the Middle East. Saudi officials were quick to say that the US was coming around to its belief that Iran was behind the disturbances in Bahrain, though nobody has produced any evidence of this. In Iraq, any attack on US forces by Shia militia groups is very publicly denounced by American generals as being organised from Iran, while there is hardly a mention of horrendous bombings of civilian targets in Shia parts of Baghdad.

Domestic American political needs become intertwined with the vicious sectarian feuds in the Muslim world. In Iraq, for instance, the American account of what happened during the Surge is that the most of the anti-occupation Sunni insurgency, usually called the Awakening movement, rose in revolt against al-Qa'ida in Mesopotamia. Violence fell and US military casualties were reduced almost to nil, but seldom mentioned is the fact that al-Qa'ida as well as the Awakening forces stopped attacking American troops, though the jihadis continued killing Shia civilians, soldiers and officials. The US commander General David Petraeus and his supporters were keen to keep quiet about the fact that al-Qa'ida in Mesopotamia had reached a tacit understanding with the US military.

The White House may want to promote confrontation with Iran at this moment for domestic political reasons, but does it actually want war? It seems unlikely, given that the US position in the Middle East is weakening because of the loss of Egypt as an ever-loyal supporter and the rise of Turkey.

Iran at first gained from the revolutions in North Africa overthrowing old enemies but then lost ground when uprisings spread to its ally Syria. As the whole region becomes more unstable, would the US really consider it in its interests to provoke new convulsions by attacking Iran?
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 16, 2011 5:26 pm

FBI Account of "Terror Plot" Suggests Sting Operation

October 16, 2011

By Gareth Porter
Source: Other News



While the administration of Barack Obama 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 an FBI "sting" operation.

Although the legal document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Quds 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 a undercover DEA informant, at the direction of the FBI.

On May 24, when Arbabsiar 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.

In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia".

Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official", wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium".

Because of opium entering Iran from Afghanistan, Iranian authorities hold 85 percent of the world's opium seizures, according to Iran's Fars News Agency. Iranian security personnel, including those in the IRGC and its Quds Force, then have the opportunity to sell the opium to traffickers in the Middle East, Europe and now Mexico.

Mexican drug cartels have begun connecting with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, in many cases stationing operatives in Middle East locations to facilitate heroin production and sales, according to a report last January in Borderland Beat.

But the FBI account of the contacts between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant does not reference any discussions of drugs.

The criminal complaint refers to an unspecified number of meetings between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant in late June and the first two weeks of July.

What transpired in those meetings remains the central mystery surrounding the case.

The official account of the investigation cites the testimony of the informant (referred to in the document as "CS-1") in stating, "Over the course of a series of meetings, ARBABSIAR explained to CS-1 that his associates in Iran had discussed a number of violent missions for CS-1 and CIS-1's purported criminal associates to perform."

The account claims that the mission discussed included murdering the ambassador. But no specific statement proposing or agreeing to the act is attributed to Arbabsiar. "Prior to the July 14 meeting, CS- 1 had reported that he and Arbabsiar had discussed the possibility of attacks on a number of other targets," the account states.

The targets are described as involving "foreign government facilities associated with Saudi Arabia and with another country...located either in or outside the United States", without mentioning any discussion of the Saudi ambassador.

Both that language and the absence of any statement attributed to Arbabsiar imply that the Iranian- American said nothing about assassinating the Saudi ambassador except in response to suggestions by the informant, who was already part of an FBI undercover operation.

The DEA informant, as the FBI account acknowledges in a footnote, had previously been charged with a narcotics offence by a state in the U.S. and had been cooperating in narcotics investigations - apparently posing as a drug cartel operative - in return for dropping the charges. The document is notably silent on whether the conversation was recorded.

A former FBI official familiar with procedures in such cases, who spoke to IPS anonymously, said the FBI would normally have recorded all such conversations touching on the possibility of terrorism.

The absence of quotes from any of those meetings suggests that they do not support the case being made by the FBI and the Obama administration.

The account is quite explicit, on the other hand, that the Jul. 14 and Jul. 17 meetings were recorded at FBI direction. Statements quoted from those transcripts show the DEA informant trying to induce Arbabsiar to indicate agreement to assassinating the Saudi ambassador.

The informant is quoted as saying he would need "at least four guys" and would "take the one point five for the Saudi Arabia". He declared that he "go ahead and work on the Saudi Arabia, get all the information we can".

At one point the informant says, "You just want the, the main guy." And at the end of the meeting, he declares, "[W]e're gonna start doing the guy".

The fact that not a single quote from Arbabsiar shows that he agreed to assassinating the ambassador, much less proposed it, suggests that he was either non-committal or linking the issue to something else, such as the prospect of a major drug deal with the cartel.

Arbabsiar's quotes from a Sep. 2 phone conversation referring to the cartel as "having the number for the safe" and "once you open the door that's it" could refer to a drug transaction that had been discussed, while the FBI account suggest those quotes refer to the assassination and "other projects" with the Iranian group.

At the Jul. 17 meeting, the DEA informant presented a plan to blow up a restaurant to kill the ambassador, with the possible deaths of 100-150 people, eliciting a lack of concern on the part of Arbabsiar about such deaths.

During a visit to Iran in August, Arbabsiar wired two equal payments totalling $100,000 to a bank account in New York. But he was still under the impression that he was about to cash in on a deal with the cartel.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Arbabsiar had told an Iranian-American friend from Corpus Christie, Texas, "I'm going to make good money."

There is also circumstantial evidence that Arbabsiar may have even been brought into the sting operation to help further implicate his cousin Gholam Shakuri in the terrorist plot.

Arbabsiar met with his cousin Shakuri in late September and told him that the cartel was demanding that he, Arbabsiar, go to Mexico personally to guarantee payment. That demand from the DEA was an obvious device by the FBI to get Shakuri and his associates in Tehran to demonstrate their commitment to the assassination.

The FBI account indicates that Shakuri told Arbabsiar that he was responsible for himself if he went to Mexico. That statement would have been a warning sign for Arbabsiar, if he still believed he was dealing with one of the most murderous drug cartels in Mexico, that he would be risking his own life for a group that was no longer taking responsibility for him.

Yet Arbabsiar flew to Mexico as if unconcerned about that risk.

After his arrest on Sep. 29 Arbabsiar waived the right to a lawyer and proceeded to provide a complete confession. A few days later, he placed a phone call to Shakuri which was recorded "at the direction of federal enforcement agents", according to the FBI.



Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006


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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:12 pm

War and the Return of Populism

Why Obama is targeting Iran
by Justin Raimondo, October 17, 2011
What’s behind the recent upsurge in anti-Iranian war propaganda coming out of the Obama administration? This is the question Stephen Walt posed on his blog at ForeignPolicy.com:

“What’s the endgame here? What is the positive purpose to be gained from this new campaign? If there really is hard and reliable evidence of a serious Iranian plot to bomb buildings in the United States and to kill foreign emissaries on our soil, then that’s one thing. But if this turns out to be a much more ambiguous business – either a rogue Iranian operation, a false flag scheme, or a case of FBI entrapment – then what are we trying to accomplish by rolling out a seemingly well-orchestrated round of new accusations, especially when there’s little chance of getting the sort of ‘crippling sanctions’ that might actually alter Iran’s behavior? Are we just trying to divert attention from other issues (the economy, the ‘Arab Spring,’ the failed diplomacy on Israel-Palestine, etc.), or is this somehow linked to the 2012 campaign?”

He’s getting warmer. The Obama cult is drawing what sounds like its last breath on the American political scene, with the President’s reelection increasingly in doubt. Yet that doesn’t begin to explain why Obama is risking alienating his base with yet another overseas conflict that we can’t afford, and the American people don’t want. Nor does it explain why he is making unambiguous statements in support of a narrative that has been met with undisguised disdain by nearly every Iran expert with any credibility: almost no one believes the Quds force, the Iranian version of our “Special Forces,” would employ an alcoholic used car salesman to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to off the Saudi ambassador and commit terrorist acts in the US (and Argentina, an allegation that appears to have been thrown into the mix for good measure). No one, that is, but the President of the United States and the anonymous high government officials who have been spinning this absurd story behind the scenes.

The big question in everyone’s mind is: why now? Why choose this particular moment to concoct trumped-up charges of “terrorism” against Iran based on a probable case of FBI entrapment? The reason may be because the Iranians are finally coming to heel on the nuclear question. As Guardian diplomatic correspondent Julian Borger points out:

“There is a growing chorus of approval among US experts for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s offer of a new uranium deal. So far the enthusiasm has failed to catch on inside the Obama administration or among the rest of the six-nation group that handles nuclear negotiations with Iran. But that could change as the months go by and the Iranian government builds up its stockpile of low enriched and medium (20%) enriched uranium.

Ahmadinejad made this latest offer in the press, first with an interview with the Washington Post in mid-September, and then with the New York Times a week or so later. The essence of the deal, the Iranian president told the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, was: “If they give us the 20% enriched uranium this very week, we will cease the domestic enrichment of uranium of up to 20 percent this very week.”

As Borger goes on to explain, Ahmadinejad’s proposal is a reiteration of an earlier Iranian offer to ship its enriched uranium – all of it – to a neutral third party in exchange for a supply of fuel to the Tehran Research Reactor, which produces medical isotopes. The earlier deal fell apart, due – it is said – to the vicissitudes of Iranian politics, and the unwillingness of the Americans to cooperate at the last minute. The Brazilians and the Turks tried to resurrect the idea in May of last year, but this, too, foundered on the rocks of American recalcitrance and Iranian vagueness. Now Ahmadinejad has raised the proposal again, this time declaring Iran would halt enrichment up to 20% – which has been a big sticking point in the past.

Up until recently, the administration was on the receiving end of a chorus of academic and diplomatic voices advising to take the Iranians up on their offer. Those voices, however, have now been drowned out by the gaggle of hysterics screaming for “retaliation” against what even prominent liberal Democrats like Sen. Carl Levin are calling an “act of war” by Iran.

Walt is right to connect the “surge” in anti-Iranian warmongering to the advent of the presidential campaign season: faced with charges by neocon Republicans that the administration is going “soft” on Iran, the “national security Democrats” are busy burnishing their credentials as reliable instruments of the War Party. But there is more at work here than mere partisan considerations.

The American elites are on trial in the court of public opinion and the verdict is just about to come in. The world economic system based on central banking [.pdf] and floating fiat currencies is crumbling beneath their feet, and the return of populism on both sides of the political spectrum has them in fear of losing their grip on power for the first time since the 1930s. While American troops are occupying Afghanistan, the folks back home are occupying Wall Street. For the plutocrats and kleptocrats – otherwise known as the Republicans and the Democrats – the jig is up, and the day of judgement looms. The political class is close to panic: those peasants with pitchforks are getting awfully close to the castle. Worse, the Frankenstein monster they created is on the loose. Europe is a set of economic dominoes getting ready to fall, and it’s only a matter of time before the American domino goes down.

When that happens, the crash you hear will be the shaky edifice of governmental legitimacy collapsing in on itself, just as it did in the former Soviet Union. Remember that they, too, were embarked – just before their fall – on a campaign of imperial expansion. They were going to “liberate” Afghanistan, free Afghan women from the bride price and the veil, and build a socialist “republic” in Central Asia. Not long after this optimistic pronouncement, however, the downing of the Berlin Wall let the air out of the tires of Soviet tanks, which beat a hasty retreat back to the Workers Fatherland. Those same tanks moved through the streets of Moscow in the hardliner coup that tried to oust Gorbachev and derail the Soviet empire’s self-dissolution. They were defeated there, too.

The Americans stood watching this process unfold in utter disbelief: indeed, leading neocons, who had made lucrative careers out of their militant anti-Communism, attacked Ronald Reagan and Bush the First for letting themselves be fooled by the commie Masters of Deceit, who – they claimed – were just playing dead in order to lash out when our guard came down. Our own CIA, and the “intelligence community” in general, hadn’t a clue about the Soviet implosion until it was nearly over. After decades and billions of dollars invested in a worldwide governmental effort to contain and eventually “roll back” the seemingly impressive Soviet colossus, in the end the Americans were mere bystanders who stood around watching as the whole thing came tumbling down.

How could they have missed it? Blindness to one’s own shortcomings is a supremely human trait, one our elites have cultivated to a ridiculous extreme. Ordinary people – you and I – tend to overlook their own prejudices and the ways in which they obscure what is really going on. The collision of our conceits with reality, however, soon forces a correction, and brings us down to earth – or else we pay the financial and psychic costs of our misconceptions. Yet our elites are increasingly insulated from paying the price of misperception. The two-party system, restrictive election laws, the influence of big money and foreign lobbyists on the electoral process – all these factors have created an insular and increasingly unreflective political class. Blinded by hubris, incapable of self-criticism, and immunized against populist sentiment, these twenty-first century Bourbons have learned nothing that will cause them to change course.

What they have learned from history is how their predecessors managed to stay on top in an existential crisis such as the one we are facing today. Confronted with economic collapse and the failure of his “New Deal” policies to lift the nation out of its downward spiral, Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his energies toward dragging a reluctant America down the path to another worldwide conflagration. War hysteria was a useful tonic to lift the nation’s spirits, and rationing masked the effects of the downturn by equalizing scarcity. The wartime “emergency” paved the way for the New Dealers to complete their takeover of the US economy – and shut down their critics, especially on the “isolationist” right.

War with Iran would solve many of the present administration’s problems, in the short term: the rise in the price of oil could then be blamed on the Iranians, along with the entire economic mess. That such a conflict would trigger a new and far more dangerous financial crisis would be obfuscated in a cloud of war propaganda. War would divert attention away from the real cause our domestic economic problems by creating a new scapegoat – besides Bank of America and their fellow crony capitalists at Solyndra – for the peasants to impale on their pitchforks.

War, in short, is the ultimate government bailout, which our political class hopes and prays will save their political asses. I can hear the Dear Leader now, as he explains how war must “unite” all Americans, and this new “unity” will be echoed on both sides of the political spectrum, as media outlets from Fox News to MSNBC urge us to “become one” and smite the Iranian foe. With the ever-present Israel lobby out in force to maintain the party line, and rein in any dissenters, politicians of the left as well as the right will march to war in lockstep. Every crisis is an opportunity, as one of Obama’s sleazier former top lieutenants put it, and in this instance you can bet our rulers intend to utilize the latest manufactured “crisis” in US-Iranian relations to perpetuate their incompetent and vulgar reign.

Gorbachev sought to co-opt the anti-Soviet revolutionaries by initiating a campaign of glasnost, and ushering in the era of perestroika. It didn’t work: indeed, it may have hastened the demise of the Leninist project. Our own rulers, however, are much cleverer than that, or so they seem to believe: they think they can latch on to and capture the populist movements that are rising on the left and the right. The Republicans are doing their best to co-opt and tame the so-called tea party movement, and the President himself is actively courting the Wall Street occupiers. By stamping these movements with partisan labels, the two parties hope to de-radicalize and derail them in the process of using them – and keep them divided along out-dated “left/right” lines, so that they never realize how closely their complaints complement each other. For their anger – and anger is the chief motivating factor in politics – is directed at a single foe: the elites who have reigned over the American empire since the end of World War II.

Piling up debt while enriching themselves, oblivious to the certain doom awaiting them as the age of profligacy comes to an abrupt end, our decadent elites in government, the corporate world, and the media-academic-industrial complex long ago surrendered whatever legitimacy they once enjoyed. What’s more, they know it: they know the day of judgement is upon them, and they are mobilizing to meet the challenge in the same way their predecessors have. A war, at this moment in time, would amount to the equivalent of the TARP program for American politicians: it would bail them out of a world of trouble. Which means: war with Iran is a near certainty. The only question is when.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

The alcoholic used car salesman who is supposed to have been behind the alleged Iranian plot to commit terrorist acts in Washington, D.C., is said to have “confessed” the details of the whole improbable scheme, and cooperated with federal agents in making recorded calls to Iran. Now we learn that Mansour Arbabsiar, the 56-year-old Iranian-American and former kebab vendor, is pleading not guilty to the charges. This, I believe, is the prelude to the real story coming out, which is that the whole thing was a set up, a phony plot created by an ambitious DEA agent and his superiors, who hoped to curry favor at the Obama White House by inventing a convenient pretext to crack down on Iran – and divert attention away from the scandal over “Operation Fast and Furious,” the DEA-FBI-Justice Department program to ship sophisticated arms to Mexican drug cartels.

If the plot was a set up, the question arises: who set Arbabsiar up? I have a feeling it wasn’t just an over-ambitious DEA agent, who, all by himself, decided to pull off a high profile coup. Nor was it his equally vainglorious and self-interested superiors, although they no doubt played an important role in pursuing the Arbabsiar case. However, over on the other side of the Atlantic, where the war drums are also beating, it seems the instigators have been outed….
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:09 am

Published on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 by Inter Press Service
US Hawks Behind Iraq War Rally for Strikes Against Iran
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Key neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks who championed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq are calling for military strikes against Iran in retaliation for its purported murder-for-hire plot against the Saudi ambassador here.

Leading the charge is the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the ideological successor to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which played a critical role in mobilizing support for "regime change" in Iraq in the late 1990s and subsequently spearheaded the public campaign to invade the country after the 9/11 attacks. The group sent reporters appeals by two of its leaders for military action on its letterhead Monday.

In a column headlined "Speak Softly …And Fight Back" in this week's Weekly Standard, chief editor William Kristol, co-founder of both PNAC and FPI, said the alleged plot amounted to "an engraved invitation" by Tehran to use force against it.

"We can strike at the Iranian Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), and weaken them. And we can hit the regime's nuclear weapons program, and set it back," he wrote, adding that Congress should approve a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iranian entities deemed responsible for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, acts of terrorism, or "the regime's nuclear weapons program".

Kristol's advice was seconded by Jamie Fly, FPI's executive director, who called for President Barack Obama to emulate former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when they ordered targeted strikes against Libya in 1986 and Iraq in 1993, respectively, in retaliation for alleged terrorist plots against U.S. targets.

"It is time for President Obama to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and stand up to tyrants who kill Americans and threaten our interests," wrote Fly, who served on the National Security Council staff and the Pentagon under George W. Bush, in the on-line edition of The National Review.

"It is time to take military action against the Iranian government elements that support terrorism and its nuclear program. More diplomacy is not an adequate response," he wrote.

The FPI appeals, which have been echoed by other former Iraq war hawks, such as Bush's former U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, and Reuel Marc Gerecht at the neo-conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), came as analysts here continue to debate the credibility of the alleged plot against Saudi Amb. Adel al-Jubeir and how to react to it if, as the administration contends, it was authorized at a high level in Tehran.

The likelihood that the plot was indeed real - and, if so, whether it gained high-level authorization - has been widely questioned, mainly by two sets of experts here.

Reaction among virtually all Iran specialists, including former government and intelligence personnel, has ranged from outright skepticism to bewilderment over what, if the alleged plot was actually consummated, Tehran would have hoped to gain from assassinating the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil.

"(N)othing short of mind-boggling," wrote Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, in reaction to the alleged plot. "If true, this plot shows a monumental lapse in judgment on Tehran's part, an audacious and reckless adventurism that will go down as the clerical regime's colossal mistake that will weaken its hand internationally and even unravel its grip on power…"

Counter-terrorist experts knowledgeable about Iran's Quds Force, the elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accused of sponsoring the scheme, have been even more skeptical that it would rely on an untested Iranian-American used-car salesman to make contact with a purported member of the Zetas drug cartel in Mexico to arrange the assassination.

The supposed Zeta contact turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), according to the complaint released with great fanfare last week by the attorney general.

"Fishy, fishy, fishy," said Bruce Riedel, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) veteran who was formerly in charge of the Near East and South Asia on the National Security Council, when asked to characterize his assessment, while Robert Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, compared the plot as outlined by the complaint to a "truly awful Hollywood script".

"None of it measures up to Iran's unsurpassed skill in conducting assassinations," he wrote on Time magazine's website.

"Why on earth would they create a situation in which they had to rely on this untested, untrained, unguided, and uncontrolled asset rather than their own people?" wrote Col. Pat Lang (ret.), the Defense Intelligence Agency's former top Middle East and South Asia analyst on his Sic Semper Tyrannis blog.

Calling the government's case "trash", Lang added that, "The overwhelming likelihood is that this is someone's 'information operation' intended to condition public attitudes for some purpose."

Such skepticism, however, has not deterred the administration, key lawmakers, or former Iraq hawks from calling for a stern response.

Indeed, Obama himself said Thursday that he will push for "the toughest sanctions" against Iran on the part of the U.S. allies and the U.N. Security Council, while senior Treasury officials testified that they were considering blacklisting Iran's central bank, a move that enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Congress, notably from lawmakers most closely associated with the Israel lobby, even before the alleged plot was disclosed.

But a number of former Iraq hawks, few of whom appear to entertain much doubt about the plot's seriousness or provenance, are calling for military action.

"More sanctions aren't a bad idea…," wrote Gerecht, a major proponent of invading Iraq when he was at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), in a column published Friday by the Wall Street Journal's staunchly neo-conservative editorial page. "But they will not scare (the regime). The White House needs to respond militarily to this outrage. If we don't we are asking for it."

Another Iraq war booster, Andrew McCarthy, also of FDD, joined the chorus in the National Review Online: "There is a range of possible political responses, of course, but given its three-decade campaign of aggression, the response to Iran must be military - and decisive. The regime must be destroyed."

Monday's appeal by FPI for military action was perhaps more remarkable, if only because three of the group's four directors - Eric Edelman, Robert Kagan, and Dan Senor - were recently named as key advisers to Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Like Kristol, Kagan was a co-founder of both PNAC and FPI and a critical advocate of invading Iraq, while Senor served in Iraq after the invasion as a top official in the Coalition Provisional Authority. Edelman, who, as ambassador to Turkey at the time, lobbied its military to support the 2003 invasion, went on to serve as undersecretary of defence for policy under former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

Although Romney has remained silent to date on how Washington should respond to the alleged plot, a number of his other advisers who championed the Iraq invasion have long called for the U.S. to make the threat of military action against Iran more credible.

In his first major policy address two weeks ago, Romney himself called for two aircraft carrier task forces to be permanently deployed in the region as a deterrent to Tehran.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 18, 2011 4:51 pm

Did FBI Go ‘Rogue’ on Iran?
October 17, 2011

Official Washington’s clamor for retaliation against Iran for its alleged role in a bizarre plot to murder the Saudi ambassador has put the U.S. and Iran on a collision course again. But Lawrence Davidson wonders whether it’s U.S. counter-terror agencies that are out of control.

By Lawrence Davidson

On Sept. 1, I posted a piece titled “America’s FBI Goes Rogue.” The gist of that piece was that the FBI’s Counter Terrorist Unit has transformed itself into an instigator of crime. The Agency’s modus operandi (MO) here reminds one of those carnivorous plants that have evolved physical shapes that lure their insect victims to their deaths.

So too does the FBI’s approach to “terror prevention” rely on spinning crime scenarios so as to lure unsuspecting “terrorists” into a criminal trap.

The recently announced arrest of the American-Iranian, Mansor Arbabsiar, a failed used car salesman turned drug peddler (who has a cousin employed by Iran’s Quds Force, the special operations unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards), falls neatly into this MO.

The Justice Departmentalleges that Arbabsiar planned to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington. At the same time the Department assures us that, according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, “for the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents.”

In this case, the confidential source was a Drug Enforcement Agency operative, who is himself a convicted felon. According to Gareth Porter, the operative is heard on one of the FBI’s clandestine recording “inducing Arbabsiar to agree to the assassination of the Saudi ambassador.” That is entrapment and it is illegal.

The “guides” are FBI agents who are involved in fabricating the crime itself. The result is a guaranteed arrest for the government.

As Glenn Greenwald has noted, “nobody can deny its [the Justice Department’s] record of excellence in thwarting its own terrorist plots.” And indeed, not unexpectedly, Bharara reminded us that during the entire “terrorist” episode, “no one was actually in danger.”

There has always been a fine line dividing the criminal from the police. That is way all major police departments have internal affairs units. The FBI’s Counter Terrorist Unit has obviously crossed that line.

The precedent this sets is bad enough, but with this particular case the Justice Department has gone much further. They have charged a foreign country, Iran, with complicity in this alleged crime.

It is supposed that Arbabsiar was recruited by his cousin to contact a Mexican drug cartel to assist him in the plot. This has let loose a plethora of threats by the United States government against Iran. President Obama himself has stepped forward to lead the charge.

“This is not just a dangerous escalation, this is part of a pattern of dangerous and reckless behavior by the Iranian government,” Obama said. “Even if Iran’s leaders did not have detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability with respect to anybody in the Iranian government engaging in this kind of activity.”

The Hypocrisy

Since the Justice Department and the FBI have such a liking for the creative envisioning of criminal scenarios, perhaps we can do the same thing. Consider the following:

–Someone in the depths of one of American’s many spy agencies, perhaps in cooperation with an allied nation, decides to assassinate Iranian nuclear experts. They decide to use proxies and go looking for guns for hire. They don’t go to Mexico for this, but rather to one of the Iranian exile groups with appropriate contacts inside Iran.

The next thing you know a number of that country’s nuclear scientists and engineers end up dead. Soon thereafter President Mahmoud Amadinejad holds a news conference and says, “This is not just a dangerous escalation, this is part of a pattern of dangerous and reckless behavior by the U.S. government. … Even if American leaders did not have detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability with respect to anybody in the American government engaging in this kind of activity.”

–Now we move to the bowels of the Pentagon where someone has drawn up a list of people who are believed to be connected to Al Qaeda. Some of the names are put on the list because of “intelligence” reports citing second- and third-hand information. Some are more solid.

One name is selected and the person’s approximate whereabouts goes out to the military geeks who program U.S. drones flying out of the Persian Gulf area. Some highly trained computer jockey then launches one of these drones and — using an elaborate joystick — flies the bomb with wings right to its target, which happens to be someone’s house.

Maybe they kill their intended target and maybe they don’t. However, a goodly number of innocent folks unlucky enough to be in the neighborhood do die.

After dozens of such attacks the President of Afghanistan or maybe Pakistan holds a news conference and says, “This is not just a dangerous escalation, this is part of a pattern of dangerous and reckless behavior by the U.S. government. … Even if American leaders did not have detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability with respect to anybody in the American government engaging in this kind of activity.”

One could go on with such examples for a long time. The point is that President Obama and the host of other American politicians and officials who have gone on record with displays of righteous indignation over Iran’s alleged involvement in a plot to enter someone else’s territory for the purpose of assassination, are probably going to appear as embarrassing hypocrites in all future relevant and objective histories.

One wonders if they even care.

Small Worlds

Why do our political leaders act in such duplicitous and hypocritical fashion? To try to answer that question it helps to remember just how small and closed a world they live in.

Their world is not an open field of public discourse or the vigorous debate of opposing viewpoints. Rather, it is bordered by the demands and points of view of interest groups that are themselves self-referencing when it comes to objectives and indifferent to morality and, indeed, truth beyond their own arena of action. Here are two relevant examples:

A. One self-referencing interest group is the law enforcement community which, given the chance, will begin to act in an authoritarian manner and thus with no real regard for rules or procedures that restrict the range of their powers.

The 9/11 attacks ushered in just such a chance for this special interest to justify actions beyond the Constitution. This behavior, in turn, has actually been encouraged by a large number of politicians catering to a majority of citizens, most of whom care little for the rights they rarely exercise in their daily lives.

As it turns out this majority appears quite willing to sacrifice those rights in the mistaken belief that doing so enhances their security.

B. Another self-referencing group is the Zionists and their supporters who also are instinctually authoritarian in their behavior and thus perfectly willing to disregard the Constitution to achieve their purposes. One of these purposes is the destruction of Iran.

It is with their encouragement that more and more members of Congress are jumping on the anti-Iran bandwagon. It is with their encouragement that, hovering in the background of the televised denouncements of Iran, are U.S. Treasury officials known to be personally pro-Israel.

These officials are primed to institute sanctions on Iran’s central bank in the hopes of destroying that country’s economy. That their excuse to do so borders on farce disturbs them not at all.

Behind all of this lies the generic problem of getting the public, so tightly focused on their day-to-day activities to realize, on the one hand, that what they are told in the media and by the government is not necessarily true. In fact, more often than not, it is untrue.

And, on the other hand, that the consequences of blindly following where these pied pipers lead can cause immense death and destruction. Just remember Vietnam and Iraq. But many do not remember and so one is led to the conclusion that such self-destructive behavior can persist for generations.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

Postby StarmanSkye » Tue Oct 18, 2011 7:24 pm

“This is not just a dangerous escalation, this is part of a pattern of dangerous and reckless behavior by the Iranian government,” Obama said.

>eyeroll<
Talk about the blast-furnace calling the stainless-steel counter-top 'dirty'.


After the recent bar-lowering stunt of 'Weapons of mass destruction' leveled against Iraq, resulting in a multi-trillion-dollar boon for the Military Industrial Complex, the national Security State spook and mercenary private-army opportunists (for which ultimate War Crime NO ONE has been held responsible for in the slightest) NOW the pretext for war seems to be as simple as a patently ridiculous, wildly improbable alleged plot that is almost embarrassingly-so spuriously contrived. THAT'S the apparant position the US now holds as the unchallenged renegade superpower, capable of blackmailing, bribing, threatening or otherwise intimidating its arrogant way thruout the world with hardly a 2nd thought.

Welcome to the 'new' improved "Might Maketh Righteth".

'Nuff to make any ordinary everyday person retch.

BTW, SLAD: Great post on 'Did FBI go Rogue on Iran' by Lawrence Davidson. Good insights and plain-talking sense on official duplicity and hyposcrisy driven by elitist delusions and authoritarian pretensions.
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