Thread: SMOKESCREEN ? >> Iranian Plot to Kill Ambassador

U.S. Challenged to Explain Accusations of Iran Plot in the Face of Skepticism

By ERIC SCHMITT and SCOTT SHANE
Published: October 12, 2011


WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday sought to reconcile what it said was solid evidence of an Iranian plot to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States with a wave of skepticism from some foreign leaders and outside experts.

Senior American officials themselves were struggling to explain why the Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, would orchestrate such a risky attack in so amateurish a manner.

The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, would not go further than to say the plot “clearly involved senior levels of the Quds Force.â€

Terror - US

Alleged Iranian Terror Plotter Was Well-Known Texas Used Car Salesman

Published October 12, 2011 | NewsCore


The Iranian American accused of organizing a $1.5 million assassination plot against Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States is a Texas used car salesman.

Manssor Arbabsiar, also known as Mansour Arbabsiar, 56, has spent most of the past 25 years living and working in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he is known as "Jack."



His friends also nicknamed him "Scarface" because of an injury he got during a fight over a woman more than two decades ago, MyFoxHouston.com reports.

Arbabsiar, a naturalized citizen who holds both an American and Iranian passport, appeared in a Manhattan courtroom dressed in jeans Tuesday to face various terror charges.

He was arrested in New York City on Sept. 29 in connection with the plot and was charged along with Gholam Shakuri, an Iran-based member of Iran's Quds Force, a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Local businessman Mitchell Hamauei said he and Arbabsiar have been friends for 15 years.

"I was very shocked to see what happened, you know," Hamauei said. "That's out of character for him and he's a businessman. Maybe he thought it was a joke. I don't know. I just don't know what's going on in his mind."

Arbabsiar was a well-known car salesman in the city's Iranian and Middle Eastern communities, but he also dabbled in other businesses, including a now-shut down convenience store and a Middle Eastern restaurant in a popular mall.

In the 1990s, Arbabsiar was arrested three times in Corpus Christi for various traffic violations. In 2001, he was accused of theft by check, but the case was later dismissed.

In 2004, Arbabsiar was arrested near Austin for driving with a suspended license.

Hamauei said his friend recently moved to Round Rock because he could sell more cars in the Austin area.

"If you wanted a wholesale car, something real inexpensive, you'd call him up and he'd get you a real good deal," Hamauei said.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/12/al ... z1ad27jkm6

Manssor Arbabsiar

Friends Say Used Car Dealer Was Too Much Of A Mess To Pull Off Iranian Plot

Ryan J. Reilly | October 13, 2011, 6:00AM

Friends of Manssor Arbabsiar, the man accused of trying to get a man he thought was affiliated with a Mexican drug cartel to arrange for the killing of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S., aren't exactly painting a picture of a criminal mastermind. In fact, they're saying that straight out.

"He's no mastermind," David Tomscha, who once owned a used car lot with Arbabsiar, told the Associated Press. "I can't imagine him thinking up a plan like that. I mean, he didn't seem all that political. He was more of a businessman."

"His socks would not match," Tom Hosseini, his former college roommate, told the New York Times. "He was always losing his keys and his cellphone. He was not capable of carrying out this plan."

Friends told the Times that Arbabsiar smoked marijuana and drank alcohol freely and had a string of businesses, "selling horses, ice cream, used cars and gyro sandwiches," leaving a "trail of liens, business-related lawsuits and angry creditors" in his wake.

"He was a happy go lucky guy, always joked around," another friend told CNN. "He had a really happy demeanor."

The friend added that Arbabsiar "would go out and party," and as far as he knew "never practiced religion." Another friend said he often misplaced paperwork and car keys.

Arbabsiar's wife, Martha Guerrero, told reporters that she and her husband "have not been living together for such a long time" and that she doesn't know anything "about his business or what he does or what he doesn't do."

Local news reports also say Arbabsiar had the nickname "scarface" because he sustained an injury in a fight over a woman in the 80s.

An additional oddity: Arbabsiar pleaded not guilty even after he allegedly offered a full typewritten confession to his role in the plot after agents advised him of his Miranda rights.

TPM

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-newsxml

'He didn't do it':
Estranged wife of Iranian 'lazy Jack' the ambassador bomber speaks out

The estranged wife of a former Texas used car dealer accused of plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador in the United States said today he was not involved in the scheme.

Speaking to CNN, Martha Guerro said: 'We've been separated for a long time, we don't have a relationship, we don't have anything to do with each other.
'This is going to jeopardize our jobs, our lives, the neighbors. We don't want that.

'My family and I just want to be in peace and move on like we were. We don't have anything to do with this.'

She added that her ex husband was innocent of charges brought against him, saying: 'I may not be living with him, being separated, but I cannot for the life of me think that he would be capable of doing that.
'He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, I'm sure of that and I know that his innocence is going to come out.'

Manssor Arbabsiar was known as 'Jack' to his friends because his name was too hard to pronounce, said David Tomscha, who briefly owned a used car lot with him in the Texas Gulf Coast city of Corpus Christi. Tomscha said his friend was likable, albeit a bit lazy.
The news came in the wake of shocking details of the planned restaurant bomb plot.
In yesterday's dramatic press conference, Eric Holder spoke of how elements of the Iranian government financed and aided the plot to murder ambassador Adel al-Jubeir - offering a bounty of $1.5 million to the plotters.

Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old U.S. citizen who also holds an Iranian passport, was charged along with Gholam Shakuri, whom authorities said was a member of the Iranian regime's hard core 'Quds Force'.
'He's no mastermind,' Tomscha told The Associated Press on today.

'I can't imagine him thinking up a plan like that.

Scroll down for video





Accused: The home of terror plot suspect Manssor Arbabsiar in Round Rock, Texas

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1afMARaLz

An additional oddity: Arbabsiar pleaded not guilty even after he allegedly offered a full typewritten confession to his role in the plot after agents advised him of his Miranda rights.

BTW there was very little news of the "Fast and Furious" supoenas yesterday.

Hmmm I cannot help but wonder what this Administration is capable of.

Eric Holder, gunrunning and a pair of Iranian numbskulls

Posted: October 13, 2011
2:58 pm Eastern
© 2011
several links on this post

"This 'brilliant' FBI and DEA coordinated sting operation that has, allegedly, 'uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington and to attack the Saudi and Israeli embassies': How does its exposure distract from the investigation into your U.S.-Mexican gunrunning operation?"

That's the question I'd have liked to pose to Attorney General Eric Holder had I been present at the news conference he and FBI Director Robert Mueller gave to a group of journo lap dogs Tuesday.

The indictment is the kind of cloak-and-dagger that belongs in an episode of "The Unit," not in the courts of a civilized country. To entrap the two defendants, Mansour Arbabsiar and Ali Gholam Shakuri, assistant U.S. attorneys relied on Title 18 of the United States Code. Sections in this "versatile" law were used to ensnare domestic diva Martha Stewart (for fibbing to the feds about a recipe, not for insider trading).

Indeed, the court complaint has more twists than a serpent's tail, but none leads conclusively to Tehran, unless Tehran is code for "Surveillance State USA."

It is befitting that the second defendant is named Gholam. In Jewish folklore "Golem" means zombie. Golem well describes Ali Gholam, who is alleged to have wired funds to Arbabsiar via "an overseas wire transfer from a bank located in a foreign country," in furtherance "of the plot to kill the ambassador to the United State of Saudi Arabia." According to the claims of the two accused clowns, Gholam is a member of the Iranian Qods Force, a branch of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (the IRGC) that conducts "sensitive covert operations abroad."

If we know anything about the Iranian special forces, it is that they are nothing like the schlemiels we've just indicted. The two remind me of Chipopo, the hero in a series of Hebrew children's books I used to devour as a kid in Israel. Chipopo was a monkey. Defendants Mansour and Shakuri's antics, as detailed in the legal brief that reads like a hastily written potboiler, conjure "Chipopo Joins the IDF," an adventure in this series. Needless to say, it was not his height that gave the monkey away during basic training.

Enter CS-1.

CS-1 is the chief witness against Holder's aspiring terrorists, "a paid confidential source" who had been "previously charged in connection with a narcotics offense by authorities of a certain U.S. state. In exchange for CS-1's cooperation … the State charges were dismissed."

Put it this way, allowing CS-1 to conduct a sting operation is a lot like letting a criminally minded attorney general run guns to Mexico's drug cartels.

Oops. Holder has already done his subversive best to corner that "market" by allegedly authorizing "Operation Fast and Furious," in which a gang going by the acronym ATF – the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – sold assault rifles to Mexican gangsters and their local gunrunners, who later used their taxpayer-funded ammunition and immunity to gun down innocent Americans and many more, mostly unmentioned, Mexicans.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed with one of these weapons. (When good guys like Agents John Dodson and Lee Casa questioned the practice, they were ordered to "stand down," or confine their activities to "surveillance.")

The feds can be funny. CS-1 and his compadres were told to pose as "associates of a sophisticated and violent international drug-trafficking cartel," and offer themselves up as assassins for hire to Gholam Shakuri and his Iranian amigos. CS-1 met Team Chipopo in Mexico. It's almost like our sophisticates were tracing the smuggling routes of Operation Fast and Furious.

Or perhaps, these simpletons were simply drawn to the original scene of the crime. "Elementary, my dear Watson."

At this rate, it is not impossible to imagine America's attorney general funneling arms to odd-balls in Iran using Operation Fast and Furious as a fig leaf.

In his broken English – a U.S. citizenship requirement – Arbabsiar, a naturalized American, boasted about his culprit-cum-cousin: The man Arbabsiar called the "Colonel" was a "wanted man in America," "on CNN" and a top banana in Iran. (I told you this is funny.)

Enough of this nonsense. The FBI often entraps pliable dolts (to better serve their political masters). The seven Miami-based men who were accused of "concocting a plot to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower" come to mind. They were illiterate and probably borderline retarded.

Not even Fouad Ajami, a dedicated Arab neoconservative, managed to divine a motive for this moronic plot, whose targets, conveniently, are satellites of the U.S. The Saudis and the Israelis would gladly corroborate any American tall tale. And not even A-Jad, much less alleged members of the Qods crack team, would be so foolish as to think a minor Saudi functionary is a worthy target for terror.

On Oct. 3, 2011, days prior to this single arrest (the "Colonel" is still at large in Iran or Cancún), CBS News reported that "Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010," in contradiction to his statement to Congress.

The Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are breathing down Holder's neck, about to crack Fast and Furious asunder.

The plot to frame Iran might well have been hatched in Disneyland, the code name for D.C.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=355417

Judge Accuses AG Holder Of Using Iran Assassination Plot To Distract From Fast & Furious Scandal

Oct 11, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... iAZLV3I4Ew

FAKE TERROR - FBI Entrapment Plot Involving Iran Assassinating Saudi Ambassador Act Of War?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzS7FA50 ... re=related

Oct 11, 2011

No One Is Buying Iranian Terror Allegations

Posted on October 13, 2011
by WashingtonsBlog
many links on this post

Iran Terror Plot: No Evidence

The day before Attorney General was subpoenaed about what he knew about the Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Agency’s “Fast and Furiousâ€