Saudi Arabia vowed on Wednesday that Iran would “pay
the price” for an alleged plot to kill its ambassador in Washington and US
officials said there could be a push for a new round of U.N. sanctions.
Tehran angrily rejected the charges laid out by a number of
top US officials on Tuesday as “amateurish”, but a threat
nevertheless to peace and stability in the Gulf, a region critical to global
oil supplies with a number of US military bases.
“The burden of proof is overwhelming… and clearly
shows official Iranian responsibility for this. Somebody in Iran will have to
pay the price,” senior Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador
to Washington, said in London.
US Vice President Joe Biden echoed those hawkish sentiments,
telling US network ABC Iran would be held accountable. He said Washington was
working for a new round of international sanctions against Iran, warning that
“nothing has been taken off the table”.
US authorities said on Tuesday they had broken up a plot by
two men linked to Iran’s security agencies to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel
al-Jubeir. One was arrested last month while the other was believed to be in
Iran.
The motive for the alleged plot was not clear. Iran has in
the past assassinated its own dissidents abroad, but an attempt to kill an
ambassador would be a highly unusual departure.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are bitter regional and to some extent
sectarian rivals, but they maintain diplomatic ties and even signed a security
agreement in 2001. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Riyadh in
2007.
The United States has led a global effort to isolate Iran
and pile on United Nations sanctions in recent years over Tehran’s nuclear
energy programme which Washington and its regional allies including Israel and
Saudi Arabia fear is a front for developing nuclear weapons. Iran denies
nuclear arms ambitions.
Those allies fear Washington could take its eye off the ball
on Iran. US diplomatic cables from Riyadh leaked by Wikileaks over the past
year – in which Jubeir features prominently – show Riyadh repeatedly pushing
the United States to take a tougher stand, including the possible use of
military force.
Tensions rose between Riyadh and Tehran when Saudi Arabia
sent troops to help Bahrain put down pro-democracy protests let by the island
state’s Shi’ite majority that both governments accused Iran, a non-Arab Shi’ite
state, of fomenting.
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This month Riyadh accused some among its Shi’ite Muslim
minority of conspiring with a foreign power – a reference to Iran – to cause
instability, following street clashes in the Eastern Province.
But Iranian analyst Saaed Leylaz said it was hard to see why
Iran would risk involving itself in such a plot.
“Killing the Saudi envoy in America has no benefit for
Iran,” he said. “The consequences of this plot are dangerous … It
could cause military confrontation in 2012 between Iran and America.”
A Western diplomat in Riyadh said the charges would likely be
discussed at the UN Security Council.
“The US and Saudi Arabia and other allies are
discussing the possibility of taking this to the Security Council because this
is an assault on a foreign diplomat in the US,” he said.
US President Barack Obama, who seeks reelection next year,
called the alleged conspiracy a “flagrant violation of US and
international law”.
The United States said Tehran must be held to account and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she hoped countries hesitant to enforce
existing sanctions on Iran would now “go the extra mile.”
But also seeking recourse in the world body, Iran’s
ambassador to the United Nations voiced outrage and complained of US
“warmongering” in a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
“The US allegation is, obviously, a politically motivated move and a
showcase of its long-standing animosity towards the Iranian nation,”
Mohammad Khazaee wrote.
Ali Larijani, Iran’s parliament speaker, said the
“fabricated allegations” aimed to divert attention from Arab
uprisings Iran says were inspired by its own Islamic revolution that toppled
the US-backed Shah — though Islam has not been the overt driving force for
unrest across the Arab world.
“America wants to divert attention from problems it
faces in the Middle East, but the Americans cannot stop the wave of Islamic
awakening by using such excuses,” Larijani said, calling the a
“childish, amateur game”.
“These claims are vulgar,” he said in an open
session of parliament. “We believe that our neighbours in the region are
very well aware that America is using this story to ruin our relationship with
Saudi Arabia.”
The State Department issued a three-month worldwide travel
alert for American citizens, warning of the potential for anti-US action, including
within the United States.
“The US government assesses that this Iranian-backed
plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador may indicate a more aggressive focus
by the Iranian government on terrorist activity against diplomats from certain
countries, to include possible attacks in the United States,” it said in a
statement.
At a news conference, FBI Director Robert Mueller said a
convoluted plot involving monitored international calls, Mexican drug money and
an attempt to blow up the ambassador in a Washington restaurant smacked of a
Hollywood movie.
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Attorney-General Eric Holder tied it to the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), guardian of Iran’s 1979 revolution, and the
Quds Force, its covert, operational arm.
“I think one has to be concerned about the chilling
nature of what the Iranian government attempted to do here,” he said.
The primary evidence linking Iran to the alleged conspiracy
is that the arrested suspect is said to have told US law enforcement agents
that he had been recruited and directed by men he understood were senior Quds
Force officials.
The Quds Force has not previously been known to focus on
targets in the United States.
A plot against targets inside the US “would be a first
for the Quds Force,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and National
Security Council analyst who now heads the Saban Center at the Brookings
Institution in Washington.
“I do want to hear more about what evidence [US
authorities] have and why they believe” that the Quds Force was involved,
Pollack said.
US officials said there had also been initial discussions
about other plots, including attacking the Saudi and Israeli embassies in
Washington, but no charges for those were brought.
There are no formal diplomatic ties between the Islamic
republic and Washington, which accuses Tehran of backing terrorism and pursuing
nuclear arms, charges Iran denies.
Iran already faces tough US economic and political sanctions
and Washington slapped further sanctions on five Iranians, including four
senior members of Quds.
US officials identified the two alleged plotters as Gholam
Shakuri, said to be a member of the Quds Force, and Manssor Arbabsiar, who was
arrested on Sept. 29 when he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport
from Mexico.
Arbabsiar, 56, a naturalized US citizen with an Iranian
passport, initially cooperated with authorities after being arrested. He made
calls to Shakuri after being arrested and acted as if the plot was still a go,
court documents said.
Arbabsiar appeared briefly in a Manhattan courtroom on
Tuesday where he was ordered detained and assigned a public defender. He
appeared in blue jeans and a dress shirt, with thinning gray hair and a scar on
the left side of his face.
Officials said the Saudi ambassador, who is close to King
Abdullah and has been in his post since 2007, was never in danger. Obama was
briefed in June about the alleged plot.
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Court documents say a plot began to unfold in May 2011 when
Arbabsiar sought help from an individual in Mexico who was posing as an
associate of an unidentified drug cartel and who was in fact a US Drug
Enforcement Administration informant.
The unidentified paid informant tipped off law enforcement
agents, according to the criminal complaint. Arbabsiar paid $100,000 to the
informant in July and August for the plot, a down-payment on the $1.5m requested.
Shakuri approved the plan to kill the ambassador during
telephone conversations with Arbabsiar, the complaint said.
As part of the plot, the informant talked to Arbabsiar about
trying to kill the ambassador at a Washington, D.C. restaurant he frequented,
but warned him that could lead to dozens of others being killed, including US
lawmakers.
The criminal complaint said that Arbabsiar responded “no
problem” and “no big deal”.
In a monitored call, Shakuri told Arbabsiar to execute the
plot, saying “just do it quickly, it’s late,” court papers say.
After Arbabsiar’s arrest in New York, he gave US authorities
more details of Tehran’s alleged involvement, Holder said.
Mueller, the FBI director, said that “individuals from
one country sought to conspire with a drug trafficking cartel in another
country to assassinate a foreign official on United States soil”.
He added: “Though it reads like the pages of a
Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would
have been lost.”
The men face one count of conspiracy to murder a foreign
official, two counts of foreign travel and use of interstate and foreign
commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire and one count each of
conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to commit an act
of terrorism.
Authorities said no explosives were acquired for the plot
and the weapon of mass destruction charge can range from a simple improvised
device to a more significant weapon. The two men face up to life in prison if
convicted.
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