{"id":22569,"date":"2012-11-05T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=22569"},"modified":"2012-11-01T06:43:54","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T06:43:54","slug":"the-fall-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/11\/the-fall-guy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fall Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fake Iranian terror plot wouldn’t convince a child.<\/em><\/p>\n

31 Oct 2012 – <\/em>The setup and railroading of Mansoor Arbabsiar<\/a>, a mentally ill Iranian emigrant, in the alleged \u201cterror plot\u201d to kill the Saudi ambassador was completed last week when he entered a guilty plea<\/a>. The 57-year-old Iranian-American, a naturalized citizen, was charged with plotting to bomb the Caf\u00e9 Milano<\/a>, in Washington DC, a favorite haunt of diplomats and other bigwigs. Faced with a possible life sentence, Arbabsiar, a former used car salesman, made his last deal: a 25-year sentence in return for a propaganda victory for the Israel lobby.<\/p>\n

The facts of this case will never be known: no trial means no evidence will be presented purportedly \u201cproving\u201d his guilt. What we do know is that in the spring of 2011 \u2014 just as the war propaganda targeting Iran was reaching a fever pitch \u2014 Arbabsiar met with a DEA drug informant posing as a member of a Mexican drug cartel.<\/p>\n

Of course, it was just a \u201ccoincidence\u201d that he chose this particular person as his contact \u2014 or was it? According to<\/a> ABC News, the delusional Arbabsiar told a court appointed psychiatrist:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019I have had so many girls. So many that you couldn\u2019t count them. I never had one girl more than once\u2026. Girls love money and cars. That was my weakness.\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was, in fact, one of these women who put Arbabsiar in touch with a man in May 2011 who said he was a member of the Mexican drug gang Los Zetas. Arbabsiar went on to ask this cartel associate \u2014 actually a Drug Enforcement Agency informant \u2014 to kill the ambassador of Saudi Arabia in Washington D.C. using explosives.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh please \u2014 if that doesn\u2019t smell like a set-up, then your nose is on backwards. Here is an informant, who has had drug charges dropped in return for his cooperation, and who is being paid to provide \u201cintelligence\u201d to law enforcement, clearly entrapping Arbabsiar.<\/p>\n

The complaint<\/a>, by the way, never quotes Arbabsiar as explicitly saying he wanted to carry out an assassination: this was no doubt suggested by the informant, who says the deluded car dealer was \u201cinterested\u201d in such a plot \u201camong other things.\u201d Gareth Porter<\/a> has suggested these \u201cother things\u201d might well have been a drug deal involving opium, a product the Iranian Revolutionary Guards \u2014 the supposed co-plotters \u2014 are said to have a large supply of: Arbabsiar reportedly told associates, prior to his bust, that he was about to make some \u201cbig money.\u201d How he expected to do that by bombing the Caf\u00e9 Milano is a bit of a mystery, one that will never be cleared up \u2014 because this case will never come to trial.<\/p>\n

At the plea appearance, Arbabsiar told the judge<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Mexico, we hired a person named \u2018Junior,\u2019 who turned out to be an FBI agent, to kidnap the ambassador. Junior said it would be easier to kill the ambassador. I and others agreed to go along with this new plan. We agreed to pay Junior, and to do that we transferred money to the United States from Iran.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It was the FBI\u2019s idea to blow up the Caf\u00e9 Milano, not Arbabsiar\u2019s. There never was any murder plot: the FBI was manipulating Arbabsiar from the start \u2014 not a hard task to accomplish, given his mental state.<\/p>\n

After his arrest, a thorough examination<\/a> of Arbabsiar, including extensive psychological testing, indicated he suffers from mania, bi-polar disorder, and paranoia: an MRI indicated \u201cabnormalities of the brain.\u201d This was confirmed<\/a> by Dr. Michael B. Frist, editor of the definitive Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders<\/em>, who extensively interviewed not only the accused but also his family and friends. Arbabsiar would lock himself in his bedroom, smoking cigarettes and pacing up and down, for weeks at a time: other times he would engage in grandiose gestures, and imagine himself a \u201cplayboy\u201d with \u201cimportant\u201d connections. He habitually lost his keys, the titles to cars, and could barely function: he eventually went broke, and couldn\u2019t even afford to go to a dentist when his teeth were practically falling out of his head.<\/p>\n

In short, Arbabsiar is the perfect fall guy.<\/p>\n

The supposed \u201ccousin\u201d working with Arbabsiar, Abdul Reza Shahlai, is reportedly a top official in the Revolutionary Guards alleged to have been involved in several terrorist attacks against American targets in Iraq, a sophisticated operative with plenty of experience in this sort of thing. Yet in a Washington Post<\/em> piece<\/a> on Arbabsiar\u2019s alleged connection to the Revolutionary Guards, we are told:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unclear how much Shahlai understood about his cousin\u2019s life in the United States and if he understood how unlikely it was that a struggling used-car salesman in Corpus Christi, Tex., could successfully orchestrate a high-profile international plot.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just \u201cunclear\u201d \u2014 the whole proposition portraying Arbabsiar as some kind of international assassin is utterly outlandish. Which is why, when the government announced their \u201ccase<\/a>\u201d against Arbabsiar, it was met<\/a> with<\/a> widespread<\/a> skepticism<\/a> and outright mockery<\/a> from analysts familiar<\/a> with Iranian intelligence operations.<\/p>\n

The lack of evidence against Arbabsiar hasn\u2019t stopped the Israel lobby from cashing in on this propaganda bonanza: Foreign Policy<\/em> has published a screed<\/a> by AIPAC-affiliated \u201cscholar\u201d Matthew Levitt, affiliated with the \u201cWashington Institute for Near East Policy,\u201d an AIPAC front<\/a>. Entitled \u201cWhy Iran Wants to Attack the United States,\u201d the piece never tells us why Tehran would take such a suicidal course. Instead, Levitt avers that the plot was \u201cdiscovered\u201d early on by US law enforcement, who then \u201cbuilt an airtight case.\u201d What did this \u201cairtight\u201d case consist of? Writes Levitt:<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the direction of law enforcement, he then called his cousin and Quds Force handler, Gholam Shakuri. With agents listening, Shakuri insisted Arbabsiar go ahead with the plot. \u2018Just do it quickly. It\u2019s late.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

For all we know<\/a>, that was Bibi Netanyahu on the line.<\/p>\n

Levitt is at pains to explain what baffled analysts in the wake of US government allegations: \u201cWhat was the Quds force thinking?\u201d Such an attack on a well-trafficked watering hole in Washington DC would have killed hundreds, and surely provoked instant and deadly<\/a> retaliation from the US. So what\u2019s in it for the Iranians?<\/p>\n

Well, you see, says Levitt, the Iranians have come up with \u201ca new calculus,\u201d which involves overseas attacks on US and Israeli targets. Giving it a scientific-sounding appellation \u2014 \u201ccalculus<\/a>\u201d \u2014 is supposed to give Levitt\u2019s argument some sort of ersatz credibility, but he cites no evidence of Iranian intentions to go after targets on American soil. Instead, he catalogues a series of \u201cfoiled\u201d plots, allegedly launched by the Iranians in collaboration with Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah \u2014 none of which involved American targets, and all of which have been denied by Tehran. His source for this?: \u201cIsraeli intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, even Levitt, hardly an unbiased analyst, has to admit that \u201cin some cases, Iranian agents employed laughable operational security; in others, the agents, like Arbabsiar, were kooky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKooky\u201d describes not only every jot and tittle of Levitt\u2019s piece, but also this entire phony \u201cplot\u201d to kill the Saudi ambassador, which was manufactured, from the very beginning, by the US Justice Department. Whether this was done in collusion with the Israelis, or Holder & Co. thought up this brilliant idea all on their own, I\u2019ll leave to my readers to speculate.<\/p>\n

Levitt leaves the best for last, concluding his piece with this cliffhanger:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Quds Force is sure to recover from its operational sloppiness, and Iranian leaders appear committed to a policy of targeting Western interests. Arbabsiar\u2019s guilty plea ends one chapter in Iran\u2019s shadow war against the West, but authorities must remain vigilant for the plots yet to come.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

What we really need to be vigilant about is the endless stream of phony \u201cplots\u201d<\/a> and Israeli-fed \u201cintelligence<\/a>\u201d designed to drag the United States into another war in the Middle East on Israel\u2019s behalf. As for the \u201coperational sloppiness\u201d of the Quds Force: if I were the Israelis, and their American amen corner, I\u2019d concentrate on the \u201coperational sloppiness\u201d of their own war propaganda. The Arbabsiar \u201cplot\u201d to kill the Saudi ambassador is such a transparently phony conspiracy theory that not even Lyndon LaRouche<\/a> would touch it with a ten foot pole.<\/p>\n

NOTES IN THE MARGIN<\/strong><\/p>\n

And why, in the name of all that\u2019s holy, did Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine publish this bilge? Ask this horse\u2019s ass<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 antiwar.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

31 Oct 2012 – Fake Iranian terror plot wouldn’t convince a child. The setup and railroading of Mansoor Arbabsiar, a mentally ill Iranian emigrant, in the alleged \u201cterror plot\u201d to kill the Saudi ambassador was completed last week when he entered a guilty plea. The 57-year-old Iranian-American, a naturalized citizen, faced with a possible life sentence, made his last deal: a 25-year sentence in return for a propaganda victory for the Israel lobby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}