Posted By David Rothkopf
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - 10:26 AM
Share
While Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Captain Louis Renault issued an official statement saying that his government is "shocked, shocked" at allegations that they were behind an assassination plot to kill Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir, the incident raises many important questions.
Among them:
-
What
would the Obama Administration's response have been had they succeeded?
If the plot had unfolded as planned and these Iranian operatives had blown up al-Jubeir in a restaurant in Washington, would the Obama Administration have considered retaliating with force against the Iranians? Drone strikes? Air strikes against selected Iranian targets (that perhaps happened to be linked to their nuclear program)? Coordinated action with the Saudis? With the Saudis and the Israelis? Or would the United States have protested vigorously in the U.N. and taken actions akin to those they are taking now to further isolate Iran in the international community? What if American citizens had been killed in the attack as they almost inevitably would have been? Remember Joe Biden's assertion long-ago that the President would be tested by foreign enemies. This is the kind of thing he had in mind. Except the context here is that the United States is broke and pulling out of the Middle East and Obama would certainly like to avoid being drawn back into a big conflict in the region. The Iranians, it seems were betting that the response would therefore be contained. And while I understand the rationale, I think the calculation is wrong. Dead Americans lying in the rubble of a Washington restaurant would require an immediate and forceful response. It would be a mistake for the Iranians or anyone else to underestimate the power an attack would have to galvanize U.S. public opinion in favor of strong action.
-
What will
happen if U.S. efforts "isolate Iran" aren't successful?
The U.S. is, according to the Washington Post, "scrambling in search of new punitive measures to impose against a country that has already been hit with multiple rounds of sanctions." As the quote implies, finding new penalties that have been already been considered, imposed, or failed is going to be tough. Further, getting other countries to go along with such measures is going to be tough if there are big powers that will sit on the sidelines as they have in past such efforts (which after all, involve the much bigger stakes associated with Iran's nuclear program). So you have to assume that whatever the United States comes up with is going to be weaker and less effective than would be optimal. And the result will be a message to the Iranians that the downside risk of exploring such initiatives is fairly minimal. It may even end up sending a message that is the opposite of the point above -- which is that the United States will not be able to response effectively even to a successful attack. My sense is that's wrong ... but let's be clear, even considering a plot like the one revealed yesterday suggests that somebody somewhere concluded the risks associated with it were manageable and worth undertaking.
-
What were
the Iranians thinking?
The prior point leads directly to the core question, why would Iran undertake such a mission? Some might ask whether this was a decision taken high up in the Iranian government, but in my view that is a naïve question. The plan allegedly involved both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its covert Quds force. These are among the most important of Iran's institutional terror arms and a plot that would directly provoke both the United States and the Saudis would not have been undertaken without approval from senior Iranian leadership. Which means that high up in the Iranian government there are those who feel they can attack the United States and the Saudis with impunity and that they welcome the potential escalation of conflict that might bring. Whether these are radical elements seeking to achieve an internal political objective through the initiative or not, the plot suggests a degree of hubris that is worrisome to say the least. Is it fed by progress Iran is making extending its influence into Iraq, its success thus far in staving off the opposition in Syria, recent progress made by its clients in Hamas, the apparent retreat of the United States to deal with domestic economic problems? Is it the beginning of a new set of bolder initiatives? If they are willing to undertake such a mission what does it mean they may be contemplating on lower risk fronts like cyber-attacks? If they are willing to be so bold what does it mean they might do should they ever actually attain nuclear weapons capability? Whatever the answers to these questions are, there is no question but that the Iranians are emboldened and remain, as the United States has long asserted, one of the leading state-sponsors of terror.
-
What does
the alleged involvement of Mexican cartels in the plot imply?
It suggests that the increasing inability of the Mexican government to impose the rule of law in several important regions of the country near the U.S. border poses a more serious security risk than is commonly discussed. Taken in conjunction with other evidence of Iranian efforts to establish operational footholds in this hemisphere (see Ambassador Marc Ginsburg's Huffington Post piece from yesterday on this), it also should suggest that security cooperation in the Americas ought to be a higher priority issue than it at least seems to be. Not that the Iranians and their scattershot and some might suggest hare-brained plans pose any kind of sustained threat to the United States of themselves. But all pockets of deeply anti- United States feeling or failed or failing states or regions in the hemisphere are certain to attract bad actors and sooner or later some plan is going to result in real damage being done. If that's the case, the casualties won't just be in the U.S., they will be to U.S. relations with other countries in the Americas. Imagine for a moment if a restaurant blast in DC was linked to both Iran and Mexican cartels. How high do you think that wall on the border would end up being? How hollow would Mexican government claims that "everything is under control" ring?
- What does Iran's involvement in this plan mean for Iran's enablers in the world? Thus far, Iran has been able to avoid feeling the real pain of sanctions targeting its nuclear program because of the explicit or tacit support of a wide variety of enablers around the world, notably those from a host of major emerging powers who may speak official words of condemnation (or not) but who continue to deal with the Iranians in ways that support the regime. Much as Putin's efforts to undercut democracy in Russia were "a headache for the BRICs" in the words of one senior diplomat familiar close to the countries involved, so too does Iran getting caught behaving true to form produce collective egg on the face of those who have been suggesting the Iranians have been persecuted by the United States or the Israelis or other powers the world loves to hate. How would a successful attack have impacted these countries and their stance on Iran? And were it to produce a forceful response that for a while put Persian Gulf oil flows at risk, how might that have impacted not just the world economy but countries like China and India that depend increasingly on that oil? Do incidents like this move such powers closer to the role that they must ultimately play as more active protectors of global security? Do they reveal to countries like China, India and Brazil in particular that there are serious dangers associated with being too involved with or supportive of a regime as dangerous as that in Tehran?
Finally, questions aside, if the plot against the Saudi Ambassador is as it was described in yesterday's press events and in subsequent stories, the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies in detecting it and quashing it deserves national ... and international ...a ppreciation. Tough as the above questions are, it is clear in considering them that a successful attack would have produced much tougher questions indeed.
You of course mean our inability to legalize cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Right?
Rothkopf not asking the right questions
Without questioning why the government of Iran would outsource such a hit to a couple of amateurs who in turn outsourced it to the Mexican cartels, Rothkopf launches into la-la land: "The Iranians, it seems were betting that the response would therefore be contained." And "What were the Iranians thinking?"
Besides the implausibility of Iranian GOVERNMENT involvement in this act, Rothkopf does apparently does not see the irony of a government which just launched an assassination attack in a foreign country on one of its own citizens, and which doesn't care much about collateral civilian damage, now screaming bloody murder that a couple of Iranians wanted to do pretty much the same.
Rothkopf is right that this whole mess raises many questions, but he's not asking the right questions.
One more Tonkin Gulf provocation
This sounds much more like an elaborate and professional Mossad set-up than an Iranian plot. Cui Bono? (What POSSIBLE good interest of Iran would be served by a bomb assassination of the Saudi ambassador in DC? Whose interests would be advanced? Who propagates for war with Iran? Could it be the young dogs of Zion?) But that point aside...
According to Rasool Nafisi, an Iranian-American scholar who studies the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, rogue elements of the Revolutionary Guards Quds force conceivably might have concocted the plot without top-level approval, perhaps to prevent rapprochement between Iran and the U.S.
So why play into their hands and let them succeed even though the plot itself failed? The absolute last thing this country needs is to be played into a new and most catastrophic war with Iran. We love to invoke international law when it serves our purposes, and totally ignore it when it suits us.
Where was international law when we overthrew the Iranian democracy in 1953 via CIA operation Ajax? (from which devolves all our problems with Iran)
Where was international law when we supported Saddam’s eight-year war with Iran, including the use of chemical weapons, and Rumsfield went to Iraq to shake his hand?
Where was international law when in 1988 a US cruiser shot down an Iranian Airbus in the Persian Gulf, in Iranian national waters, killing 290 civilians?
The absolute last thing we need is another catastrophic war with Iran. Sure, we can blast them and create vast chaos, but chaos is one enemy no amount of bombing can cure. How does the slamming shut of the Straights of Hormuz sound to you, through which passes about half of all the petroleum exports of the whole world? Small boat actions and various missile strikes could do that very easily.
I argue we should not let the Quds force succeed (if they were not being set-up that is) even though their plot failed. Sounds reasonable to me.
Plus, of course, "Is this just one more example of possibly illegal entrapment by US law enforcement that converted silly gossip or infantile dreaming into something that was prosecutable?" News that the FBI handed over $100,000 to delude its targets into thinking they could go ahead with an assassination plot suggests entrapment strongly to me. Federal courts have been unduly respectful of anti-terror prosecutions since 9/11, and it's hard to believe that they themselves don't know what.
It looks like this a play from the playbook of Bush and his henchman, So many questions and no answers. What up with the assassinating the Saudi ambassador. Mr. Al jubair, has no power what so ever. He is not from the Royal family and his real job is to translate to the KING. Believe it or not they bring him all the way back to Saudi Arabia translates to the king. Then the question of Iran plot on US soil. Why would they do that? And look the people they ire to do it. People who believe that do not understand the Iran. Iran drove the US crazy in Iraq and they could not find any evidence implicating Iran supporting Iraq insurgents, even though Iran has many operators in the region. General Petreuis kept saying Iran is helping the insurgents and kept on saying the new explosions are more powerful so they came from Iran, but no proof the US could show or go the UN with.
Also Why Iran wants to antagonize the US. No need to for that. The US is bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq and hemorrhaging money and US economy in shambles. What is more important that the President and congress is at each other throat, but such action will help them unite with Israel against Iran And that will unite the country here and help Israel by helping the US bombing Iran and help its isolation from the world. But what is more important is Syria situation and how this impacts the UN Security Council and how Russia and china will vote next.
The whole situation stinks and if the Obama administration does not use the secret evidence against these guys, we will find out that the story is different. And the FBI used some shady things to get this Idiot.
It's worth noting here that besides Iran, the ONLY other intelligence agency on the planet that would be capable of producing a plot/fake plot like this one would be Israels Mossad. I'm just saying, don't point the finger at Iran until we are sure. This is exactly the type of thing the Mossad is the best in the world at.
There are good questions, but I'd add another related question:
When the hell are we going to ger serious about energy independence?
I think if there were mass casualtie, the American people would have demanded a massive millitary response that would destroy most of the Iranian millitary machinery (tanks, planes, Navy) and atempted to inflict mass casualties on the revolutionary guard. Of course, the blowback from this would be massive, and the last thing we need is another, war but politically, I don't see anything else that could happen unless Obama decided that another war was not worth his re-election.
I don't think this could possibly be the Israelis. They would never risk losing the support of the United States.
What would they be risking? It's already been proved that Israel can kill American sailors with no consequences. Remember the USS Liberty.
Stop with the conspiracy theories
That Israel has a MOTIVE to provoke a war between the USA and Iran is beyond question.
Clearly it does.
But there is no EVIDENCE of any Israeli involvement in this case.
None.
Zip.
Zero.
As such any claim of Israeli involvement is nothing but a conspiracy theory, and as such is not worth promoting.
So either come up with EVIDENCE for an Israeli involvement or drop this nonsense.
Iran had nothing to gain by this assassination. The surest way to get to the bottom of something is to look at who gains by the commission of the crime. Add to the fact that Iran had nothing to gain to the fact that these men had no means of carrying out the assassination other than what the FBI and DOJ provided them and it becomes more like a case of entrapment.
Best case scenario: These Iranians were agents and somehow got involved with the only Mexican Drug Cartel that informs to the FBI and it was a plot stopped in it's planning stages.
Worst case scenario: These Iranians were disgruntled and the Feds goaded them into anti-Saudi actions and provided them with a friendly cartel assassin and provided them with the means to commit the crime.
You don't ask the obvious question
You start with an assumption that the USA's allegation of Qods Force involvement in this plot is true, and then you procede from that premise.
Shouldn't you start by questioning that base assumption?
Ask yourself this question: why would a professional group of very experienced spooks think that it is A Good Idea to recruit a Texas used-car salesman to hire a Mexican drug cartel to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a packed Washington restaurant?
I would suggest that the only sensible answer to *that* question is this: they wouldn't think that this is A Good Idea at all.
The Iran terror plot story as a litmus test
This article demonstrates that David Rothkopf is quite gullible and not nearly as sharp-minded a political analyst as Glenn Greenwald, Robert Baer, Juan Cole, Stephen Walt, Jim Lobe, Max Fisher, Justin Raimondo, Tony Karon, etc.
Seriously: how can anyone look at this Iran terror plot story without instantly laughing? If your first inclination was to believe it, not to question all its basic assumptions and assertions, you will believe anything. You would believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, that Saddam possessed WMDs, that Muslims were behind the 9/11 anthrax attacks and that the Iraq War would be a cakewalk.
If the Obama administration possessed hard evidence to support its claims, it would have led with that evidence when it released this story to the world. But it didn't get its ducks in a row.
Agreed. My comment below just in case:
David Rothkopf (is that Jewish or an Iranian surname perchance?) displaysan arrogance normally to be expected here. In answer to his questions which are rhetorical and the usual faux bacon tossing between Islam and Judaism with a larger eye on a larger prize.
1. They would have permitted their Israeli allies to use the bunker busting bombs they just sold them. A sort of middle grade war escalation technique.
2. Why should Iran be isolated. Isolate Israel and their ally Saudi Arabia and the problem and terrorism goes away plus a new oil supply arrives in town.
3. The Iranians as any power elite knows have gone out of their way to not upset the apple cart as we approach the deadline for another fake casus belli. Ahmedinejad has extended the arm of peace in as visible a manner as possible on main stream media for extended interviews. It makes no sense to wreck these overtures with silliness that will provoke a deadly attack on his country. He knows and so does the U.S that Iran will not succeed with provoking this kind of scenario.
4. The Mexican cartel involves the DEA who as any person claiming to understand power knows are in a tight drug-distribution alliance with brutal casualties unimportant to maintaining a fictitious narrative. It tells us that US involvement is deeper than a superficial analysis provides.
5 This last question by David Rothkopf is an act of tin foil hat desperation from a weak and biased man not worth answering.
Rothkopf doesn't seem to understand that there were no real Mexican drug dealers (allegedly) involved in this plot, only a DEA agent posing as one. Maybe this wasn't clear yet on October 12? But he should add an update.
My guess: Wondering "What would the Obama Administration's response have been had they succeeded?" is like asking "What would have happened if James Cromitie and the Newburgh plotters had acquired real Stinger missiles?" There would have been no plot without the DEA's involvement.
Foolish of Obama to step in till the case was resolved. Now he has a stake in the outcome. Very bad. Nothing should have been said about this from leadership until more information was available. Nothing.
This feels like the US has, again, been successfully phished.
The potential for embarrassment here is very high and if it resolves that way Iran will have a free hand in any future plots.
David Rothkopf (is that Jewish or an Iranian surname perchance?) displaysan arrogance normally to be expected here. In answer to his questions which are rhetorical and the usual faux bacon tossing between Islam and Judaism with a larger eye on a larger prize.
1. They would have permitted their Israeli allies to use the bunker busting bombs they just sold them. A sort of middle grade war escalation technique.
2. Why should Iran be isolated. Isolate Israel and their ally Saudi Arabia and the problem and terrorism goes away plus a new oil supply arrives in town.
3. The Iranians as any power elite knows have gone out of their way to not upset the apple cart as we approach the deadline for another fake casus belli. Ahmedinejad has extended the arm of peace in as visible a manner as possible on main stream media. It makes no sense to wreck these overtures with silliness that will provoke a deadly attack on his country. He knows and so does the U.S..
4. The Mexican cartel involves the DEA who as any person claiming to understand power knows are in a tight drug-distribution alliance with brutal casualties unimportant to maintaining a fictitious narrative. It tells us that US involvement is deeper than a superficial analysis provides.
5 This last question by David Rothkopf is an act of tin foil hat desperation from a weak and biased man not worth answering.
The US is bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq and hemorrhaging money and US economy in shambles. What is more important that the President and congress is at each other throat, but such action will help them unite with Israel against Iran And that will unite the country here and help Israel by helping the US bombing Iran and help its isolation from the world. But what is diy home ideas more important is Syria situation and how this impacts the UN Security Council and how Russia and china will vote next.
David Rothkopf is the CEO and Editor-at-Large of Foreign Policy. His new book, "Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government and the Reckoning that Lies Ahead" is due out from Farrar, Straus & Giroux on March 1.
Read More
May/June 2013
-
Profile
-
FP Power Map
-
Think Again
Follow us on Twitter | Visit us on Facebook | Follow us on RSS | Subscribe to Foreign Policy
About FP | Meet the Staff | Foreign Editions | Reprint Permissions | Advertising | Writers’ Guidelines | Press Room | Work at FP
Services:Subscription Services | Academic Program | FP Archive | Reprint Permissions | FP Reports and Merchandise | Special Reports | Buy Back Issues
Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Contact Us
11 DUPONT CIRCLE NW, SUITE 600 | WASHINGTON, DC 20036 | Phone: 202-728-7300 | Fax: 202-728-7342
FOREIGN POLICY is published by the FP Group, a division of The Washington Post Company
All contents ©2013 The Foreign Policy Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
(19)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE