NY Times: Iran Reacts to Pressure From America

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised on Sunday that Iran would deliver “an unforgettable response” to any “improper actions” from the United States over an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

The ayatollah appeared to be responding to an American campaign to further isolate and pressure Iran, an effort that received a push on Sunday with reports that President Obama is pressing United Nations nuclear inspectors to release classified data showing that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

The United States accused Iranian officials last week of plotting to murder the ambassador in a bizarre scheme involving an Iranian-American used car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million. Two men — the Iranian-American,Mansour J. Arbabsiar, and an officer in the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — have been charged in the plot.

Iran’s leaders have called the case a fabrication meant to distract Americans from their own problems, and The Associated Press reported Sunday that Iranian state TV had said that Iran’s Foreign Ministry requested consular access to Mr. Arbabsiar.

Norbert Bärlocher, a spokesman for the Swiss Embassy in Washington, said the embassy had no knowledge of whether the Iranians had passed such a request to the Swiss government. He said, “We represent the U.S. in Iran, but we do not represent Iran in the U.S.”

Asked if she knew of any request to see Mr. Arbabsiar, his lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, said, “I have no such knowledge.”

The supreme leader’s comments on Sunday were his strongest yet about the case.

“If any American officials entertain delusions, they should know that any improper action, whether political or security related, will meet a decisive response from the Iranian nation,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, while speaking to university professors and students in Kermanshah Province in western Iran.

The ayatollah said that the United States was using the accusations to divert attention from its financial problems, suggesting that the protests over economic injustice sweeping the globe were an embarrassment to Washington. He said that “the people of at least 80 nations have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement, and this is very bitter and difficult for American officials to accept.”

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also weighed in on Sunday, saying the alleged plot is just another of Washington’s “scenarios.” The semiofficial Press TV reported Mr. Ahmadinejad as saying that the United States makes “daily efforts to conceive scenarios against Iran. And, in this instance, it accused Iran of terrorism, but it should be clarified for the Americans that terror is the work of those that have no culture.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, according to Mehr News and IRNA, semiofficial news agencies, also issued a veiled threat to Mr. Ahmadinejad not to overstep his boundaries, addressing a power struggle between the two that has been going on most of this year. The ayatollah said, “Changing Iran into a parliamentary system from a presidential system” someday would not be a problem.

The news agencies focused on this comment. The implication, analysts said, was that Ayatollah Khamenei, the nation’s ultimate authority, was warning Mr. Ahmadinejad that he could abolish the presidency in the future.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/world/middleeast/iran-warns-america-against-trying-to-pressure-it.html?_r=1&src=tp

Alleged plot to assassinate Saudi ambassador: Biden warns Iran of ‘serious consequences’

WASHINGTON, Oct 12: US Vice President Joe Biden warned Iran on Wednesday that it would have to face ‘serious consequences’ for allegedly plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. US President Barack Obama called the plot a “flagrant violation” of US and international law but allowed his deputies to do most of the talking.

Also on Wednesday, the US imposed sanctions on an Iranian commercial airline – Mahan Air – for allegedly “ferrying operatives, weapons and funds” on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is also known as the Quds force.

“The consequences for Iran, I think, will be serious. I think what we have to do is unite the entire world against the Iranian behaviour,” Mr Biden told CBS News.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that senior members of Iran’s Quds force had participated in the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi envoy, Adel al-Jubeir.

“It’s clear that senior levels of Quds force were engaged in the plotting,” he said, adding that Washington would respond by intensifying efforts to isolate Iran.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the alleged plot was a “dangerous escalation” in Iran’s support of terrorism.

The plot is “a flagrant violation of international and US law and a dangerous escalation of the Iranian government’s long-standing use of political violence and sponsorship of terrorism”, she said.

On Tuesday afternoon, the US Justice Department announced that it had charged Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalised US citizen, and Gholam Shakuri, a member of the Quds force with conspiring to carry out a bomb attack on the Saudi envoy.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi called the plot “an amateurish scenario” and told the news agency ISNA there have been similar allegations over the past few decades.

“The Islamic Republic never seeks to get involved in this kind of behaviour and, despite 32 years of pressure brought to bear on Iran, the country has always acted and reacted ethically,” he said. But the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington endorsed the US claim saying that the plot was “a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions” and said it was “not in accord with the principles of humanity”.

In London, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal told a conference that “someone in Iran is going to have to pay the price” for the plot.

Vice President Biden said the US was laying out its case to world leaders and demanded “accountability for Iran and further isolation of Iran in terms of their ability to operate around the world”.

Iran was already subject to numerous American sanctions but on Wednesday, the US Treasury Department expanded the sanctions to include Mahan Air, claiming that it was “yet another facet of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ extensive infiltration of Iran’s commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism”.

On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in condemning Iran.

“This would constitute an act of war not only against the Saudis and Israelis but against the United States,” said Congressman Michael McCaul.

“Iran’s assassination of a foreign diplomat in our country would have violated both US and international law, and represented an act of war,” said Congressman Peter King.

Congressman Ted Poe called the plot an “act of war” against the United States and said: “We have to do something.”

But a senior US Defence Department official told Fox News the announcement was “not a trip wire for military action” in Iran.

“No one should read into this as preteens for any type of military response,” the official said.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/13/alleged-plot-to-assassinate-saudi-ambassador-biden-warns-iran-of-serious-consequences.html

Guardian UK: Iranians charged in US over plot to assassinate Saudi ambassador

US claims elements of Iranian government directed bomb plot with alleged involvement of Mexican drug cartel

US attorney general Eric Holder describes the "murder-for-hire" plot Link to this video

A dangerous confrontation was developing on Tuesday between the US and Iran after the Obama administration directly blamed the Iranian governnment for an alleged plot to blow up the Saudi ambassador and scores of others at a Washington restaurant with the help of a Mexican drug cartel.

The US attorney-general Eric Holder said Iran would be "held to account" over what he described as a flagrant abuse of international law. While the US says military action remains on the table, it is at present seeking instead to work through diplomatic and financial means to further isolate Iran.

The US Treasury department immediately imposed sanctions against five individuals allegedly linked to the plot.

The Iranian government reacted by dismissing the allegations, saying the US was expert at making false claims. "This is a fabrication," said a spokesman for the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Two men, one an an American-Iranian, Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, and Gholam Shakuri, an Iranian, have been charged in New York with the alleged "murder-for-hire" plot to pay a Mexican drug cartel to help assassinate Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador and close confidante of the Saudi king.

According to the US justice department, the aim was to bomb a restaurant in Washington frequented by Jubeir with the possibility of a hundred or more bystanders being killed in the explosion. US officials said the Iranians put a $1.5m price tag on the assassination.

The White House said Obama called Jubeir today to express solidarity between the US and Saudi Arabia in the face of "a flagrant violation of US and international law".

Arbabsiar appeared briefly in court in New York this afternoon, and was held without bail. Shakuri, who is alleged to be a member of the Quds Force, a special operations team inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is said by the US to be in Iran.

The US views the plot as state-sponsored terrorism. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton described it as a "violation of international norms" and said she would discuss with allies in Europe and elsewhere round the world how to further isolate Iran.

The Saudi embassy in Washington described the alleged attempt to assassinate its Jubeir as "despicable".

Relations between the US and Iran have been tense for years over Tehran's alleged pursuit of a nuclear bomb. But the court case heightens tensions even further, introducing unpredictable elements such a risk of retaliation by Saudi Arabia.

The central question is whether a rogue element in Iran may have been involved or whether the alleged plot had been sanctioned by a senior leader. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, who was briefed in detail, reufsed to say whether Ahmadinejad had been involved but he insisted it was "an Iranian government sanctioned event".

Arbabsiar was arrested on September 29 at New York's JFK airport following a sting operation involving the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The FBI director, Robert Mueller, speaking alongside Holder at a press conference in Washington, described the plot as "reading like a Hollywood script".

The justice department claimed Arbabsiar was working under the direction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

He allegedly met on a number of occasions in Mexico with a DEA confidential source who was posing as a member of the drugs cartel Zetas. The source, according to the indictment, had faced drugs charges in the past but these had been dismissed in return for him becoming a paid informer.

According to the justice department, Arbabsiar met with the DEA source in Mexico on May 24 where he discussed explosives and explained that he was interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia. They held further meetings in Mexico in June and July.

Arbabsiar allegedly arranged for $100,000 to the transferred into a bank account in the US for the supposed cartel member.

He is alleged to have told the DEA source that the assassination needed to go forward, despite possible mass casualties, telling him: "They want that guy [the ambassador] done [killed], if the hundred go with him f**k 'em." The agent and Arbabsiar allegedly discussed bombing a restaurant in the United States that the ambassador frequented.

When the agent noted that others could be killed in the attack, including US senators who dine at the restaurant, Arbabsiar allegedly dismissed these concerns as "no big deal".

The use of a sting operation is likely to prompt scepticism about the extent, if any, of the Iranian government's involvement. Although the focus of media attention this year has been on the Arab Spring, the Pentagon, State Department and White House have all been increasingly worried about alleged nuclear developments in Iran.

Steve Clemons, a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst, said: 
"This is a serious situation - and this kind of assassination is the sort that could lead to an unexpected cascade of events that could draw the U.S. and other powers into a consequential conflagration in the Middle East."

The five facing US Treasury sanctions are: Arbabsiar and Shakuri; Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani; Hamed Abdollahi, a senior Quds Force official, who allegedly coordinated aspects of the plot; and Abdul Reza Shahlai, a Quds official also allegedly involved in the operation.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/11/iranians-charged-us-assassination-plot