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US steps up sanctions and threats against Iran over alleged terror plot
 international |
anti-war |
other press
 Friday October 14, 2011 12:51 by pat c
Bill Van Auken analyses the latest attempt by the US to ramp up pressure on Iran including an increase in sanctions. The FBI Director said it read like a Hollywood script. Well maybe its just that: a work of fiction. Robert Baer, a 21-year veteran CIA case officer in the Middle East told ABC News that the US charges were not “credible.” He said: "They’re much better than this. They wouldn’t be sending money through an American bank, they wouldn’t be going to the cartels in Mexico to do this."
Full text at link.
The White House announced Wednesday that it is imposing a new round of economic sanctions against Iran, while Vice President Joseph Biden warned that “nothing has been taken off the table” in regard to Washington’s response to an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, suggesting the possibility of military strikes.
Among the new targets of US sanctions is Mahan Air, Iran’s first privately owned airline, which flies to 12 countries. US officials claimed that the airline was involved in “secretly ferrying” members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Washington has seized upon the alleged plot to attempt to terrorize the American people, issuing a global travel warning against unspecified threats supposedly emanating from Iran while cautioning that attacks within the US itself are also possible.
The supposed terrorist plot was announced to the public by US Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday in Washington. The Justice Department’s case involves a wildly unlikely scenario involving a failed Iranian-American used car dealer from Texas, Manssor Arbabsiar, traveling to Mexico and attempting to enlist the feared drug cartel Los Zetas in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, by blowing him up in an unnamed Washington restaurant. The other relevant plot twist is the fact that the supposed representative of Los Zetas contacted by Arbabsiar happened to be a confidential informant for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
During Tuesday’s press conference, FBI Director Robert Mueller felt compelled to note that the government’s case “reads like the pages of a Hollywood script.”
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3An interesting piece by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich which makes the link with Argentina and the 1994 bombing.
The Assassination Plot & Argentina
News wires are abuzz with the extraordinary allegation of an Iranian “plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US ”. In yet another bizarre twist, according to Haaretz , a few months ago prior to the “plot”, Saudi officials told Argentina about a possible plot against Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires . Curious as this seems, there is reason for this new rumor.
As many Iran experts dismiss the possibility of such an act, the tried and tested method of rendering the most fantastic rumor credible is being applied. For decades, the British and later Americans knew well that the best way to give rumors credibility was to ensure that such rumors were repeated by various "friendly" countries. Propaganda became ‘fact' if repeated by different countries. This method of propaganda was a well-known and well played tactic of the Allies against Germany .
In dealing with Iran , the allegations of a plot take on a new life when repeated by various allies. In this new scenario, there is an attempt to give these farfetched allegations credibility, not only are the Saudis and Israelis being involved, but also Argentina . This reference to Argentina is particularly important.
In the past, Iran had been falsely (and without proof) accused of the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center (AMIA) in Buenos Aires , Argentina . What is revealing about the 1994 bombing and the accusations made against Iran , is the fact that the far more plausible leads were dismissed in order to promote the “ Iran guilty” narrative.
Another article on the issue, throwing down a chsallenge to the US. Full text at link.
<em>“If the Obama administration truly believes it has credible evidence that Iran was behind this alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi diplomat on the streets of Washington D.C., then it must invoke the Protection of Diplomats Convention(PDC) and demand arbitration of this claim with Iran,” a distinguished American authority on international law says. The diplomat Iran is accused of plotting to kill is the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
“In the event Iran were to reject such arbitration, then the Obama administration could sue Iran at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the so-called World Court of the United Nations System,” says Professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign...</em>
<strong>On the other hand, Boyle continued, “If the Obama administration’s real motivation is to concoct and manufacture a pretext for a crisis resulting in provocations and hostilities, it will continue to argue its so-called case to the Western news media which is inherently biased against Iran, instead of resorting to this regularly established and already proven to be effective international judicial dispute settlement procedure.” The PDC was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1973...</strong>
The role of the neo-cons in the latest war moves against Iran. 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".