Oct 18, 2011

When the story first hit the news, intelligence officers expressed serious doubts that Iran was actually behind this alleged assassination attempt against the Saudi ambassador to the US. The method used was simply not their method of operation, and the bungling was just not as professional as the Iranians have always been.

Here is an article written by one former CIA field officer who has serious doubts:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2096747,00.html

According to the Department of Justice indictment, an Iranian-American used-car salesman attempted to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit. Other parts of the plan included bombing the Israeli embassy in Washington, as well as the Israeli and Saudi embassies in Argentina. The Iranian was willing to pay the cartel assassins $1.5 million to murder the Saudi ambassador. But the plot came undone when the man representing himself as a cartel operative turned out to be a paid informant of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The Iranian, who confessed after his arrest, is now behind bars.

Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.

It all seems too convenient, not unlike G.W. Bush's fake excuse to attack Iraq, claiming that Iraq was seeking to obtain "yellow cake" (nuclear material). That fake excuse was brought to light only after we were already engaged in the war and it was too late to stop it.