Of course it was. The State Department.

U.S. President Barack Obama will make efforts made ??to increase the pressure on Iran and isolate it, in a report posted on its website that Obama urges nuclear inspectors at the United Nations to restore the pressure on Iran by shedding light on the nuclear program.

Apparently the author missed the rather unusual (if relatively mild) criticism Iran gave to Syria only days ago.
Also I have to wonder about the demand for stronger responses (without ever mentioning what those should be) when the author just mentioned (on page 2) the serious blowback experienced by leaders when they felt a political need to do something like this.

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but one does get an erie feeling. The Saudis have practically been begging for a US led invasion/intervention.

The wars of today are coming to an end and the wars of tomorrow needs to fill their place, the situation demands it. The war economy demands it.

And hey, there's no more effective way to win an election then the act of war!

It's right here:
"Arbabsiar also 'met several times in Iran' with Ali Gholam Shakuri, a senior member of Iran's paramilitary Quds Force"

That Arbabsiar met with Shakuri is not something I dispute.

That Shakuri is a co-conspirator with Arababsiar appears to be obvious.

But the assertion that Shakuri is "a senior member of Iran's paramilitary Quds Force" is presented here as a self-evident truth, when it is nothing of the sort; it is an accusation, and therefore needs to be substantiated.

Consider....
Q: Who says Shakuri is a member of Quds Force?
A: Arbabsiar says so.

Q: Is Arbabsiar a reliable judge of such things?
A: Welllllll, he is a man who is incapable of telling a DEA undercover agent from a Mexican hitman.......

Mutual understanding, lovely. Iran thinks assassination is a legitimate state tool, too. Bang boom Bynum!

Meanwhile back on Planet America. Somewhere in the hinterlands, "Plausible deniability plus parallels; good guys and bad guys: If I blow your brains out from here is that different from you homogenizing my skill set from there?" I didn't think so.

Hollywood on the Persian Gulf; the lost hero, Mossadeq 1953, vs. whomever America shot last week. Let's enter: intrepid democratic pioneers, Bahrainis? Syrianians? Palestinians? What's the right haircut?

What would George, Clooney Washington, do? Darn.

I don't believe this plot for one minute.
The iranians might be many things but they are not stupid.

Even if it's all true, so what? Are you gonna call for a military intervention in Iran? that's what you all want isn't it? The contracts in Iraq is drying up? ammo sales are down? what?

If we should judge all countries equally, we should have an article every time America kills someone illegally on foreign soil. And calls for stricter sanctions to make the american government behave. Heck with all the cases perhaps a military intervention by the UN is in order to make the US comply with international law. Equality? fairness? yeah it all sounds so good when you preach to other countries. Get your own shit together and realize the age of imperialism is over.

Iran has offered to cooperate in the investigation. Take them on their words and ask to interrogate Shakuri.

the author didn't present evidence that this operation was in fact ordered by the Iranian regime. It's just more ideas of what may have happened based on past events. The tag-line on the front page made it seem like it was undeniable that Iran did it, but the article didn't back it up.

Any evidence?

As Gareth Porter -- an actual journalist -- not a pro-Zionist shill reports, the "plot" was likely a "sting": i.e. the government gave the idea of the assassination to the used car dealer, who himself was looking to make some $ from a drug deal. Is this complicated?

See:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/14/more-sting-than-plot/

On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.

In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was “interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia”.

Among the “other things” was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a “federal law enforcement official”, wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who “controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium”.

Because of opium entering Iran from Afghanistan, Iranian authorities hold 85 percent of the world’s opium seizures, according to Iran’s Fars News Agency. Iranian security personnel, including those in the IRGC and its Quds Force, then have the opportunity to sell the opium to traffickers in the Middle East, Europe and now Mexico.

Mexican drug cartels have begun connecting with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, in many cases stationing operatives in Middle East locations to facilitate heroin production and sales, according to a report last January in Borderland Beat.

But the FBI account of the contacts between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant does not reference any discussions of drugs.

The criminal complaint refers to an unspecified number of meetings between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant in late June and the first two weeks of July.

What transpired in those meetings remains the central mystery surrounding the case.

The official account of the investigation cites the testimony of the informant (referred to in the document as “CS-1?) in stating, “Over the course of a series of meetings, ARBABSIAR explained to CS-1 that his associates in Iran had discussed a number of violent missions for CS-1 and CIS-1?s purported criminal associates to perform.”

The account claims that the mission discussed included murdering the ambassador. But no specific statement proposing or agreeing to the act is attributed to Arbabsiar. “Prior to the July 14 meeting, CS- 1 had reported that he and Arbabsiar had discussed the possibility of attacks on a number of other targets,” the account states.

The targets are described as involving “foreign government facilities associated with Saudi Arabia and with another country…located either in or outside the United States”, without mentioning any discussion of the Saudi ambassador.

Both that language and the absence of any statement attributed to Arbabsiar imply that the Iranian- American said nothing about assassinating the Saudi ambassador except in response to suggestions by the informant, who was already part of an FBI undercover operation.

The DEA informant, as the FBI account acknowledges in a footnote, had previously been charged with a narcotics offence by a state in the U.S. and had been cooperating in narcotics investigations – apparently posing as a drug cartel operative – in return for dropping the charges. The document is notably silent on whether the conversation was recorded.

A former FBI official familiar with procedures in such cases, who spoke to IPS anonymously, said the FBI would normally have recorded all such conversations touching on the possibility of terrorism.

The absence of quotes from any of those meetings suggests that they do not support the case being made by the FBI and the Obama administration.

The account is quite explicit, on the other hand, that the Jul. 14 and Jul. 17 meetings were recorded at FBI direction. Statements quoted from those transcripts show the DEA informant trying to induce Arbabsiar to indicate agreement to assassinating the Saudi ambassador.

The informant is quoted as saying he would need “at least four guys” and would “take the one point five for the Saudi Arabia”. He declared that he “go ahead and work on the Saudi Arabia, get all the information we can”.

At one point the informant says, “You just want the, the main guy.” And at the end of the meeting, he declares, “[W]e’re gonna start doing the guy”.

The fact that not a single quote from Arbabsiar shows that he agreed to assassinating the ambassador, much less proposed it, suggests that he was either non-committal or linking the issue to something else, such as the prospect of a major drug deal with the cartel.

Arbabsiar’s quotes from a Sep. 2 phone conversation referring to the cartel as “having the number for the safe” and “once you open the door that’s it” could refer to a drug transaction that had been discussed, while the FBI account suggest those quotes refer to the assassination and “other projects” with the Iranian group.

At the Jul. 17 meeting, the DEA informant presented a plan to blow up a restaurant to kill the ambassador, with the possible deaths of 100-150 people, eliciting a lack of concern on the part of Arbabsiar about such deaths.

During a visit to Iran in August, Arbabsiar wired two equal payments totalling $100,000 to a bank account in New York. But he was still under the impression that he was about to cash in on a deal with the cartel.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Arbabsiar had told an Iranian-American friend from Corpus Christie, Texas, “I’m going to make good money.”

There is also circumstantial evidence that Arbabsiar may have even been brought into the sting operation to help further implicate his cousin Gholam Shakuri in the terrorist plot.

Arbabsiar met with his cousin Shakuri in late September and told him that the cartel was demanding that he, Arbabsiar, go to Mexico personally to guarantee payment. That demand from the DEA was an obvious device by the FBI to get Shakuri and his associates in Tehran to demonstrate their commitment to the assassination.

The FBI account indicates that Shakuri told Arbabsiar that he was responsible for himself if he went to Mexico. That statement would have been a warning sign for Arbabsiar, if he still believed he was dealing with one of the most murderous drug cartels in Mexico, that he would be risking his own life for a group that was no longer taking responsibility for him.

Yet Arbabsiar flew to Mexico as if unconcerned about that risk.

After his arrest on Sep. 29 Arbabsiar waived the right to a lawyer and proceeded to provide a complete confession. A few days later, he placed a phone call to Shakuri which was recorded “at the direction of federal enforcement agents”, according to the FBI.

GARETH PORTER is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.

Of course iranians are involved. It's quiet easy to do so from Venezuela through Mexico. Los Zetas are in the two countries and have connexions with gangs on U.S territory. The more you find intermediates the safer you are. it seems that the Zetas may have been operating in mid-western and southeast U.S. states since 2007, and have been linked to incidents of kidnapping, drug trafficking and extortion in the region. The brief cites an unnamed intelligence source who claims that a Zeta leader known as Gaspar Gonzales Alcantar used a network of enforcers to extort money from victims in both Tennessee and Oklahoma.

The memo also refers to another source with “excellent access” who speaks of a prisoner in South Carolina’s Bennettsville Federal Correctional Institution who has been dealing cocaine and marijuana to other inmates from within the prison since early 2008. According to the source, the individual has ties to the Zetas, and claims they are his sole supplier.

If these accounts are as credible as the FBI claims, it would mean that in 2008 the Zetas were poised to extend their reach into the Midwestern U.S., making their influence in this country much higher than is conventionally known. While alarming, this fits with much of the available information on the Zetas, which indicates that the group is working on deepening its criminal reach not just in the United States, but throughout the entire hemisphere.

Wow -- lot of pro-MEK types on this site.

Even Barbara Slavin said the Saudis or Israelis may be behind it.

I think it was a simple government sting: they got a guy who wanted a drug deal the idea of killing the ambassador.

. . aside from insisting that this absurd comedy is real, the US government has remained largely silent -- suggests that the administration has been sucker-punched by persons and agencies unknown or un-revealed at this time.

Just Google "mohammad reza sadeghnia" to find out about another assassination plot involving an Iranian hired to kill an Iranian in California.
The FBI was aware of Arbabsiar in connection with that plot, which was uncovered two years ago but for some reason downplayed by the press despite being the first example of Iran's efforts to assassinate inside the United States. The 2009 plot apparently led the FBI to hunt for Arbabsiar in the recent sting operation.

The United States is overlooking the fact that Islam is way too linked to politics in Muslim countries. The lack of understanding this fact has and will cost them a lot in terms of its Foreign Policy in the Middle East.
Islam is very strict in behavior codes, especially when it comes to drinking and drugs. It is very unlikely that Iran, having the record of being a fundamentalist state where they want to follow the exact words of Koran, not any interpretations, would be interested of doing business with Mexican drug cartels that morally and behaviorally are the opposite extreme to Muslims: they drink, they do drugs, they have vices, women, etc. So the allegation needs to be revised and most of all, we should try to understand how they think in order to have a coherent policy that will indeed keep the American interest safe in the region.

This is really interesting...but why would Iran do such thing? I was scanning some portable printers review when i realized what FBI Director Robert Muller noted about the allegations to seem like scripted. Oh my..

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Man, the US is really on the p's and q's when it comes to thwarting these attacks. I think our intel is really good. Seems like we thwart an attack every other month. pajama jeans review
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