American officials say the goal was to get Mexican drug traffickers to kill Saudi ambassador Adel al-Jubeir with a bomb at a Washington restaurant. Officials say there were also plans to attack the Saudi and Israeli embassies.
Mr. Arbabsiar is a former used-car dealer in Texas. Officials say he unknowingly sought help from an informant for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. They say he believed this person had ties to Mexican drug groups.
Mr. Arbabsiar was arrested last month at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. He reportedly admitted paying one hundred thousand dollars toward a price of one and a half million dollars for the attack.
Attorney General Eric Holder said that a second suspect facing charges, Gholam Shakuri, may be in Iran. He said Mr. Shakuri belongs to the Quds force, a part of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Quds force is suspected of involvement in attacks against American-led forces in Iraq, and of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Ali Reza Nader is with the RAND Corporation, a research group.
ALI REZA NADER: "First of all the Iranian security services including the Revolutionary Guards like to work through proxies, so other groups, whether they are Hezbollah or Hamas or Shia insurgents in Iraq or the Taleban in Afghanistan. They like to maintain some kind of plausible deniability, not necessarily be tied to spectacular terrorist plots."
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25