Just watched, in-flight, a press conference by Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller, during which they laid out a chilling and admittedly thrilling (foiled) plot by senior members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (the Quds Force) to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and bomb both the Saudi and Israeli Embassies.
Evidently, the most controversial part of the plot called for their hired assassin, an American of Iranian descent, to set off explosives in a restaurant in Washington, DC that was bound to kill scores of people, including the ambassador and most notably several unnamed members of Congress.
Thankfully, the would-be assassin and his Iranian contacts – who never set foot in the U.S. but wired $100,000.00 (as downpayment on $1.5 million) in furtherance of this plot – were under FBI surveillance from the very outset in May.
U.S. law-enforcement authorities became aware of the plot when the would-be assassin contacted someone who he thought was a member of the Mexican gang called the Zetas. He intended to hire members of this notorious gang to do his dirty work the way American farmers hire migrant workers from Mexico to do theirs.
As it happened the U.S. had the Zetas under surveillance in an unrelated matter and the gang member this would-be assassin contacted turned out to be a U.S. informant. The would-be assassin is now in U.S. custody.
But here’s the real headline:
This is only the latest act of aggression against the U.S. by Iran. Indeed, the boldness of their aggression in this respect was such that I was compelled to write a commentary two years ago entitled Iran arming America’s enemies in Afghanistan … duh! in which I questioned U.S. passivity in light of this escalating aggression. And only weeks ago, Major General Jeffrey S. Buchanan accused members of this same Quds Force of “providing direct support” to militia forces in Iraq that are killing not just Iraqis, but American soldiers as well.
Now add to all of this the saber rattling successive U.S. presidents from Reagan to Obama have been making towards Iran over its nuclear program.
Which begs the question: Is it really going to take a mushroom cloud to finally provoke retaliation by the U.S. for these blatant acts of aggression? And what, pray tell, will the Saudis and Israelis do? After all, they both operate by the less genteel laws of lex talionis (an eye for an eye…).
Holder insisted that the U.S. will hold the Iranian government accountable for this attempted assassination and terrorist bombings. But nobody believes this will include military force, which clearly is the only type of accountability the Iranians fear and would respect.
Meanwhile, I have no doubt that critics of the Obama administration will spin the timing of this press conference as a spectacular attempt to deflect attention from Congressional hearings on AG Holder and the Justice Department’s bungling of a gun-running investigation (dubbed “fast and furious“) that ended up releasing hundreds of high-powered guns into the hands of members of Mexican drug cartels. One of those guns is alleged to have even been involved in the killing of a U.S. border guard.
Interestingly enough, Holder went out of his way to thank the Mexican government for its indispensable cooperation in apprehending the would-be assassin as he attempted to fly to Mexico on September 28 to finalize the plot.
But as cynical as I am, I do not believe there is any connection between the timing of this press conference and those Congressional hearings. Instead, I believe it has everything to do with the arrest and subsequent interrogation of the would-be assassin.
Related commentaries:
Iran arming America’s enemies…
* This commentary was published yesterday, Tuesday, at 3:32 pm