Marcy Wheeler, now writing for The Atlantic as well as at emptywheel.net, has a nice piece about the latest terrorist du jour, the alleged would-be destroyer of Saudi Ambassadors and DC restaurants.
As usual for Wheeler, the piece is well researched and nicely logicked. Seems Mr. Arbabsiar is not the reason-for-war some want him to be. Here's a taste:
In the wake of the Obama Administration's announcement that an Iranian-American used car salesman had set up a plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., a number of Iran and intelligence experts have raised questions about the plausibility of the alleged Iranian plot.Wheeler lists four pieces of evidence in the government's complaint, and identifies problems with each. For example, there are significant holes in the list of conversations taped by the paid informer, which means we must rely on the word of the informer for the nature of the original agreement between the "plotter" and the informer that led to money changing hands.
But few have commented on problems in the legal case presented against the used car salesman, Manssor Arbabsiar, and his alleged co-conspirators from Iran's Quds Force, a branch of its special forces. There is a handful of what appear to be holes in the complaint. Though individually they are small, taken together they raise difficult questions about the government's case. The apparent holes also seem to match up with some of the same concerns raised by skeptical Iran analysts, such as Arbabsiar's rationale in confessing and the extent of his connection to the Quds Force.
The government claims that Arbabsiar sought out someone he thought was a Mexican drug cartel member in May; he was actually a Drug Enforcement Agency confidential informant. Over a series of meetings, the government alleges, Arbabsiar arranged to forward $100,000 to the informant as down payment for the attack, promised $1.5 million more, and agreed that the informant should kill Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir with a bomb blast at a DC restaurant, one that would possibly be full of civilians and U.S. members of Congress.
There are other problems as well; Wheeler does a good job detailing them.
She agrees that the government could fix those holes — for example, by unsealing the original complaint. But, she adds, "[U]ntil the government does those things, it has offered not just a plot that appears implausible to a number of Iran experts, but one with significant weaknesses in the legal case."
Haven't we seen this movie before? This is just the opening bit, but the plot is starting to sound a little familiar.
GP
