Recent revelations about Iran's alleged potential links to a conspiracy to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington have stunned people throughout the world, especially Iranians inside Iran. US officials disclosed early this week that an Iranian-American man, Manssour Arbabsiar has been held in custody since September 28. They claimed that he had conspired with the militant Al-Quds Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to carry out this assassination in the US. Arbabsiar had allegedly planned the crime with Gholam Shakori, an Iranian that US authorities believe is a member of the Al-Quds force inside Iran and offered $1.5 million to an FBI agent posing as a member of a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the assassination. The agent was paid $100,000 paid up front as a down payment. However, when Arbabsiar flew from Germany to Mexico in late September, he was denied entry into Mexico and deported on a commercial flight back to the US, where he was subsequently arrested in JFK national airport on arrival in New York City. To date, the only available information supporting the allegations of IRGC involvement, yet to be examined in court, includes tape-recorded conversations between Arababsiar and undercover agents posing as Mexican drug cartel members, as well as recordings of his phone calls with his alleged accomplice in Iran, Gholam Shakori. There is no indication of any hard evidence supporting the charge that the Iranian government or Revolutionary Guard were directly involved in this apparent conspiracy. Inside Iran, even reformists and members of the government's political opposition are treating allegations of IRG involvement in the foiled assassination with scepticism. Prominent Iranian reformist Mohamed Khatami has said: “It sounds like more attempts to find pretexts against us are coming out everyday, especially given that the situation here is now more difficult.” The public reaction as reflected in Iranian blogs and twitter feeds has generally been concerned with the reason why Iran's elite Al-Quds Brigade would hire and trust Arbabsiar. According to his friends, he is a “simple, non-religious, alcohol-drinking second-hand car salesman”. Why would such a man be assigned to plan a sophisticated, high-level assassination? The IRG would be either extremely stupid or dumb not to think of the consequences of murdering the Saudi ambassador on US soil, says a prominent Iranian university scholar who has asked to remain anonymous. The US and Israel have sought to penetrate and understand Iran's mysterious Al-Quds Force for years, while attempting to monitor the unit's activities. They have accused it of running training camps inside Iran for members of Hamas and Hizbollah and have also closely observed the Al-Quds Force because of its role in helping Hizbollah in Lebanon during the 33-day war with Israel in 2006. But, inside Iran, most ordinary Iranians have never heard of the elite Al-Quds Brigade, which was first created during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, as a special unit within the broader IRGC Forces. After the end of that war, during which the Al-Quds Brigade helped Iraqi Kurds to fight against the Iraqi military, the unit continued to support Iraqi Kurds in their fight against then late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The Al-Quds Brigade also expanded its operations into other areas, most notably aiding Ahmed Shah Massoud, then top commander of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Soviets and later against the Taliban. There were also reports of the Al-Quds Brigade supporting Muslim Bosnians fighting the Serbs during wars in the former Yugoslavia. The Islamic Republic also has a history of carrying out terror attacks against opposition figures outside Iran. The last recorded attempt was in the mid-1990s, when Iranian Kurdish opposition members were killed at the Mikonos restaurant in Germany. This attempt was a huge source of international embarrassment for the Iranian regime, and perhaps led to a shift in Iran's entire foreign policy, as the country sought to improve its ugly reputation in the international community. Today, Iran's external policies have demonstrated that Tehran does not want to engage in a direct military confrontation. Most recently, during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the US, he welcomed Washington's idea to launch a hotline between Iran's navy and US naval forces, in order to prevent an accidental confrontation between the two countries, due to lack of communication between their ships in the Arab Gulf. A complex operation such as the alleged assassination would require a team of operatives and complicated logistics that would have to be planned and carried out clandestinely. In addition, Al-Quds Brigade operations have to be approved by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Why would the Al-Quds Brigade Force engage one single unit member, allegedly Shakouri, in such a conspiracy and why would its alleged contact inside the US, Arbabsiar, seek out Mexican drug cartels widely known to be infiltrated by US intelligence? The only link Arbabsir has to Iran is ethnicity. In comparison with a rather similar situation, Washington has never blamed Saudi Arabia for the 9/11 attacks, although fifteen out of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi nationals, Arbabsair's appearance in court and the evidence against him will eventually determine what really happened. Was the simple Arbabsiar, who, according to the New York Times badly needed money, tricked into believing that he involved in a big operation, for which he would be well-paid by Al-Quds Brigade? Perhaps the target of this conspiracy was the Islamic Republic of Iran rather than the Saudi Ambassador in the US?
Entekhabifard is an Iranian journalist, who regularly contributes to The Egyptian Gazette and its weekly edition, the Mail.
