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

Manssor Arbabsiar

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 he's not 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."

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Iran

Analysis: Alleged Assassination Plot Doesn't Fit Past Iranian Behavior

October 12, 2011, 4:55PM

Manssor Arbabsiar

by Sebastian Rotella ProPublica

The alleged Iranian plot to use Mexican cartel gunmen to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington is one of the strangest, most serious terrorism cases to surface in years, a mix of seemingly credible evidence and unlikely scenarios that departs dramatically from Iran's past record of global terrorist activity.

On Tuesday, a grim-faced U.S. attorney general and the FBI director accused Iranian intelligence officials in an alleged $1.5 million scheme to kill Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir of Saudi Arabia in a bombing at a restaurant in the capital.

The federal indictment has escalated an already fierce conflict between the United States and Iran, alleging a brazen decision by Iranian officials to shed blood on U.S. soil and an ominous convergence of threats from separate worlds: Iran's far-flung terror apparatus and the Zetas, a drug cartel founded by former Mexican commandos.

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DOJ

Did Iranian Regime Approve Plot To Have Mexican Drug Cartel Member Kill Saudi Arabian Ambassador?

Ryan J. Reilly | October 12, 2011, 6:00AM

FBI Director Robert Mueller (Left) And U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (Right)

It's not everyday that the U.S. Attorney General and director of the FBI stand at a press conference and accuse military officials in a foreign country of plotting to assassinate an ambassador to the United States.

But that's just what happened Tuesday, when Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller went before the cameras at the Justice Department and laid out the details of an alleged plot to kill the Saudi Arabian Ambassador, involving a Texas-based Iranian-American named Manssor Arbabsiar.

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