Egypt’s Military Expands Power, Raising Alarms

October 14, 2011
NYT
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

CAIRO — Egypt’s military rulers are moving to assert and extend their own power so broadly that a growing number of lawyers and activists are questioning their willingness to ultimately submit to civilian authority.

Two members of the military council that took power after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak said for the first time in interviews this week that they planned to retain full control of the Egyptian government even after the election of a new Parliament begins in November. The legislature will remain in a subordinate role similar to Mr. Mubarak’s former Parliament, they said, with the military council appointing the prime minister and cabinet.

“We will keep the power until we have a president,” Maj. Gen. Mahmoud Hegazy said. The military had pledged in formal communiqués last March to hold the presidential election by September. But the generals now say that will come only after the election of a Parliament, the formation of a constitutional assembly and the ratification of a new constitution — a process that could stretch into 2013 or longer.

A transition to civilian rule before and not after the drafting of a new constitution was also a core component of a national referendum on a “constitutional declaration” that passed in March as well. The declaration required that the military put in place democratic institutions and suspend a 30-year-old emergency law allowing arrests without trial before the drafting of the constitution to ensure a free debate. But by extending its mandate, the military will now preside over the constitutional process.

The military’s new plan “is a violation of the constitutional declaration,” Tarek el-Bishry, the jurist who led the writing of that declaration, wrote this week in the newspaper Al Sharouk, arguing that the now-defunct referendum had been the military’s only source of legitimacy.

The United States, where concerns run high that early elections could bring unfriendly Islamists to power and further strain relations with Israel, has so far signaled approval of the military’s slower approach to handing over authority. In an appearance this week with the Egyptian foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged an early end to the emergency law but called the plan for elections “an appropriate timetable.”

Within Egypt, however, the schedule is a fresh source of tension between the military council and civilian political leaders from liberals to Islamists. Political leaders say they were shocked last week when two dozen Coptic Christian demonstrators died in clashes with soldiers guarding a government building. Some protesters were run over by military vehicles and others were shot.

Confidence in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces — known as SCAF — reached a breaking point, many political leaders say, three days later when the military council placed blame for the deaths on the aggression of the demonstrators and denied that the soldiers used live ammunition. The military has blocked any civilian investigation into the clash.

“No political party can trust the SCAF now,” said Emad Gad, an analyst at the state-financed Al Ahram research group and now an active member of the Social Democratic Party. “We are seeing the real face of the SCAF, after the lifting of the mask.”

Citing a series of public hints as well as pattern of actions, activists and analysts now say they believe that the military is seeking to slow down a democratic transition until it feels certain that its position and privileges will remain unassailable even under civilian rule. Some here have advocated offering the military special rights including immunity from prosecution in civilian courts, protection from oversight of their operations and budget, and a writ to intervene in political affairs in the name of protecting the secular character of the government. “It is an open secret” that carving out special powers is the main goal of the military, said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

The postponement of the handing over of power until after the presidential election, he said, was “a clear sign that the SCAF did not want a civilian president who under the current constitutional declaration would have power over the army for the first time since the 1952 revolution.”

Last spring, the military was viewed by some liberals as moving too quickly toward new elections. They feared that the military’s original timetable for transition to democratic rule, with elections of Parliament, a new president and the drafting of a new constitution all taking place within a few months, could effectively hand power to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that was Egypt’s main political opposition under Mr. Mubarak. That was when some liberals began arguing publicly that the military should define for itself its own powers and role under the new constitution, including the broad autonomy and authority to intervene to protect the secular character of the state.

Some now call the military’s deadly violence against the Coptic protesters a wake-up call for such liberals. “The liberal elite was so blinded by the fear of Islamists’ taking over that they were willing to accept the security blanket of the army,” said Mr. Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Individual Rights. “But Sunday’s massacre was a turning point because they saw what the army was capable of — brutality that came as a very early reminder of what things were like under Mubarak.”

After the military’s clash with the Coptic Christian protesters, the Muslim Brotherhood took a more sympathetic view of the military’s role than the liberal parties. “All the Egyptian people have grievances and legitimate demands, not only our Christian brothers. Certainly, this is not the right time to claim them,” the Brotherhood said in a statement.

But the Brotherhood, too, objected to the new election schedule. Its Freedom and Justice Party urged the military council “to come back to the first vision it laid out, and which it changed without any known reasons, of holding the presidential elections without delay.”

Selecting a committee to draft a constitution will be the most important function of the new Parliament. The military has said it will impose certain diversity requirements on the membership. Parties and candidates running for Parliament acknowledge that they do not know what powers it may have while the military controls the government. But several politicians said they planned to compete for seats, in part to have a platform for potentially challenging the military. “What else can we do?” asked Mr. Gad, of the Social Democratic Party.

Heba Afify contributed reporting from Cairo.

Who's behind the Wall Street protests?

Reuters By Mark Egan and Michelle Nichols | Reuters 10/13/2011

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anti-Wall Street protesters say the rich are getting richer while average Americans suffer, but the group that started it all may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men.

There has been much speculation over who is financing the disparate protest, which has spread to cities across America and lasted nearly four weeks. One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.

Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street. Moreover, Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground.

"I can understand their sentiment," Soros told reporters last week at the United Nations about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which are expected to spur solidarity marches globally on Saturday.

Pressed further for his views on the movement and the protesters, Soros refused to be drawn in. But conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation when he told his listeners last week, "George Soros money is behind this."

Soros, 81, is No. 7 on the Forbes 400 list with a fortune of $22 billion, which has ballooned in recent years as he deftly responded to financial market turmoil. He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.

Like the protesters, Soros is no fan of the 2008 bank bailouts and subsequent government purchase of the toxic sub-prime mortgage assets they amassed in the property bubble.

The protesters say the Wall Street bank bailouts in 2008 left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from Washington. They contend that the richest 1 percent of Americans have amassed vast fortunes while being taxed at a lower rate than most people.

BANKING LIFE SUPPORT

Soros in 2009 wrote in an editorial that the purchase of toxic bank assets would, "provide artificial life support for the banks at considerable expense to the taxpayer."

He urged the Obama administration to take bolder action, either by recapitalizing or nationalizing the banks and forcing them to lend at attractive rates. His advice went unheeded.

The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, 2012, election. He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch.

According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.

Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

Aides to Soros say any connection is tenuous and that Soros has never heard of Adbusters. Soros himself declined comment.

The Vancouver-based group, which publishes a magazine and runs such campaigns as "Digital Detox Week" and "Buy Nothing Day," says it wants to "change the way corporations wield power" and its goal is "to topple existing power structures."

SLOW START

Adbusters, whose magazine has a circulation of 120,000 and which is known for its spoofs of popular advertisements, came up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, said Kalle Lasn, 69, Adbusters co-founder.

"It came out of these brainstorming sessions we have at Adbusters," Lasn told Reuters, adding they began promoting it online on July 13. "We were inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and we had this feeling that America was ripe for a Tahrir moment."

"We felt there was a real rage building up in America, and we thought that we would like to create a spark which would give expression for this rage."

Lasn said Adbusters is 95 percent funded by subscribers paying for the magazine. "George Soros's ideas are quite good, many of them. I wish he would give Adbusters some money, we sorely need it," he said. "He's never given us a penny."

Other support for Occupy Wall Street has come from online funding website Kickstarter, where more than $75,000 has been pledged, deliveries of food and from cash dropped in a bucket at the park. Liberal film maker Michael Moore has also pledged to donate money.

The protests began in earnest on September 17, triggered by an Adbusters campaign featuring a provocative poster showing a ballerina dancing atop the famous bronze bull in New York's financial district as a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks approach behind her.

Dressed in anarchist black, the battle-ready mob is shrouded in a fog suggestive of tear gas or fires burning. Some are wearing gas masks, others wielding sticks. The poster's message seems to be a heady combination of sexuality, violence, excitement and adventure.

Former carpenter Robert Daros, 23, saw that poster in a cafe in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Having lost his work as a carpenter after Florida's speculative construction boom collapsed in a heap of sub-prime mortgage foreclosures, he quit his job as a bartender and traveled to New York City with just a sleeping bag and the hope of joining the protest movement.

Daros was one of the first people to arrive on Wall Street for the so-called occupation on September 17, when protesters marched and tried to camp on Wall Street only to be driven off by police to Zuccotti Park - two acres of concrete without a blade of grass near the rising One World Trade Center.

"When I was a carpenter, I lost my job because the financier of my project was arrested for corporate fraud," said Daros, who was wearing a red arm band to show he was helping out in the medic section of the Occupy Wall Street camp.

Since its obscure beginnings, the campaign has drawn global media attention in places as far-flung as Iran and China. The Times of London, however, was not alone when it called the protests "Passionate but Pointless."

Adbusters' co-founder Lasn dismisses that, reeling off specific demands: a tax on the richest 1 percent, a tax on currency trades and a tax on all financial transactions.

"Down the road, there will be crystal clear demands coming out of this movement," he said. "But this first phase of the movement is messy and leaderless and demandless."

"I think it was perfect the way it happened."

Senate Armed Services chairman: Alleged Iranian assassination plot may be act of war

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, October 12, 2011

WASHINGTON — The alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States may be an act of war against the U.S., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday.

“It may be,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters when asked whether he considers the alleged scheme to be an act of war. “But I’d want to see what the implications of that characterization are before I use it.”

At the least, Levin said, the alleged plan was “a damn serious threat to the United States.” He said that either way, there should be a serious response by the U.S., but he declined to say what that response might be.

“It’s in the United States, an alleged effort to assassinate somebody on our territory who, by the way, is an ambassador to the United States. So whether or not that constitutes an act of war against the United States” is a valid question, he said.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who heads a Homeland Security subcommittee, said the alleged plan would be an act of war if it was sponsored by the Iranian government.

Federal prosecutors have accused Iran of planning to pay a Mexican drug cartel figure to kill the Saudi ambassador with a bomb in Washington. President Barack Obama says the purported scheme is “a flagrant violation of U.S. and international law.”

Iran has denied the accusations.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Investigators initially doubted plot had Iran ties

WP
By Joby Warrick | 02:38 PM ET, 10/12/2011

The plot by alleged Iranian operatives to kill a Saudi diplomat in Washington was so crudely constructed that U.S. investigators initially had trouble believing that Iran was truly behind it, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Although the Justice Department eventually linked the plan to Iran’s elite Quds Force, almost nothing in the case bore the hallmarks of the notorious military unit that has trained and equipped terrorists and assassins around the world, the officials said.
Mansour Arbabsiar (CBS News)

A wire transfer two months into the uncover probe--$100,000 in cash, moved in tell-tale fashion from Iranian bank accounts to an undercover agent in Mexico--finally persuaded American investigators that the assassination plan had high-level backing. And still, questions remained about who in Iran knew of the plot and at what level it was approved.

“What we’re seeing would be inconsistent with the high standards we’ve seen in the past,” said one U.S. official, one of four who briefed journalists about the four-month investigation. The officials agreed to speak on the condition that neither their names nor affiliations be disclosed.

Justice Department officials disrupted the plot in September with the arrest of an Iranian-American, Mansour Arbabsiar, 56, who is accused of working with Quds Force members in Iran to carry out a hit against Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

According to court documents, Arbabsiar was tasked by an Iranian cousin with recruiting Mexican hit-men for a $1.5 million plan to kill Jubeir as he dined in a Washington restaurant. The alleged plan was foiled when Arbabsiar made contact with a man he believed was a drug-cartel member. Instead, it was an undercover informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The U.S. officials acknowledged that initial details of the alleged plot engendered great skepticism among law-enforcement and intelligence analysts who worked on the case. The Iranians involved exercised uncharacteristically sloppy tradecraft in trying to recruit unknown gunmen—from a drug cartel with no known ties to Iran—to carry out such a politically explosive act as the assassination of a powerful Saudi envoy in the heart the U.S. capital.

Over time, however, intelligence agencies gathered what they considered corroborating evidence connecting the plot firmly to Quds Force officers, including Gholam Shakuri, a member of the elite unit with whom Arbabsiar met in Iran. The officials declined to elaborate on the nature of the evidence but acknowledged that the money transfer provided important clues.

While acknowledging they did not have conclusive proof, the U.S. officials said they were convinced that Quds Force chief Qassem Suleimani and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameinei were at least aware of the plot’s general outlines.

“We do not think it was a rogue operation, in any way,” a second official said. But he added: “We don’t have specific knowledge that Suleimani knew about specific” details of the plot.

The officials said American investigators theorized that the operatives’ sloppiness reflected Iran’s inexperience in working in North America, where even the globally networked Quds Force lacks connections and contacts. But they said the oddly brazen nature of the plot may also may have reflected the naivete of the clique of hard-line clerics that has come to dominate Iran’s leadership in recent years.

“These leaders have no Western experience, and they have a great misunderstanding of the United States,” the second official said. “They don’t understand where the red lines are.”

Officials: Iran’s amateur-hour plot shows inexperience in hitting US, but also deadly intent

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, October 12, 2011

WASHINGTON — The alleged Iranian plot against the Saudi ambassador to Washington was “amateur hour,” an unusually clumsy operation for Iran’s elite foreign action unit, the Quds Force, U.S. officials said Wednesday as further stranger-than-fiction details emerged of the assassination gone wrong.

The Iranians’ would-be covert operative turned to a woman he met while working as a used car dealer, hoping to find a Mexican drug dealer-assassin, and wound up with an American informant instead, according to two U.S. law enforcement officials.

Other U.S. officials said Manssor Arbabsiar made further mistakes, including arranging a pay-off for the attack in an easily traceable way.

They attributed the missteps to Iran’s relative inexperience carrying out covert operations in the United States and Mexico.

They said the U.S. believes the planned attack on the Saudi ambassador was conceived in part as proof that such an operation could be carried off. Then, perhaps, Iran would have followed up with a series of attacks against other embassies in the U.S. and in Argentina, officials said.

All of the officials requested anonymity in order to provide details from classified analyses and an active criminal case.

In public remarks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke Wednesday of a “dangerous escalation” of what the U.S. claims is an Iranian pattern of franchising terror abroad.

“We will work closely with our international partners to increase Iran’s isolation and the pressure on its government and we call upon other nations to join us in condemning this threat to international peace and security,” Clinton said at a Washington conference.

Her words strongly suggested that the U.S. wants some new action against Iran from the U.N. Security Council, which has already approved several rounds of mild to moderate sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program.

Two men, including a member of Iran’s Quds Force special foreign actions unit, were charged in New York federal court Tuesday with conspiring to kill the Saudi diplomat, Adel Al-Jubeir. Justice Department officials say the men tried to hire a purported member of a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the assassination with a bomb attack while Al-Jubeir dined at his favorite restaurant.

U.S. officials believe Iran hoped that an attack of that design would be blamed on al-Qaida. That, in turn, would strike at two of Iran’s chief enemies: the U.S., constantly at odds with Iran over its nuclear aspirations, and Saudi Arabia, battling Iran in a diplomatic Cold War for influence across the Persian Gulf and Middle East.

Saudi Arabia most recently helped thwart Shiite-majority demonstrators in Bahrain, whom Iran backed, and clashed again with Iran in Syria. Iran advised Syrian leaders on how to crack down on demonstrators, while Saudi Arabia has encouraged further protests and called for the Syrian government’s ouster.

The Quds Force is tasked with extending Iranian influence through fear and violence, intimidating other countries with assassinations, terror attacks and kidnapping, the officials said.

Such plots are managed by the Quds Force’s Special External Operations Unit, and carried out by sometimes unexpected proxies, like anti-Shiite Sunni extremists, the officials said.

The unit answers directly to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who U.S. officials believe is briefed on high-profile operations. While the U.S. has no direct proof, and did not charge in court, that the top Iranian leaders approved this attack, any such operation would be vetted at the highest levels, one of the officials said.

U.S. law enforcement officials said the criminal charges were limited to those actions they could prove in court, and did not cover all the information they had gathered about possible Quds Force goals or intentions. Even the roles of three of four Quds officers connected to this plot were not detailed in the criminal case but instead were laid out in economic sanctions imposed on them administratively by the Treasury.

During an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton said the Obama administration is stepping cautiously and won’t overstate its case.

The alleged plot “does give a lot of credibility to the concerns” about other Iranian activity, Clinton said in the interview Tuesday. “But we have to be careful, and we’ve tried to be very careful in this instance. What you’ll see in the complaint is what we know, what we can prove.”

The U.S. blames the Quds Force for some of the worst terrorist acts against U.S. troops overseas, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia.

More recently, the group has smuggled long-range rockets into Iraq for use by Shiite militant groups, including in an attack on Camp Victory outside Baghdad on June 6, that killed six U.S. servicemen, U.S. officials said.

The Iranian group also plays a double game in Afghanistan, providing overt cash and economic aid to the Afghan president while funneling weapons such as long-range rockets to the Taliban, the officials said.

Arbabsiar is a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who also had an Iranian passport. In May 2011, the criminal complaint says, he approached someone he believed to be a member of the vicious Mexican narco-terror group, Los Zetas, for help with an attack on a Saudi embassy.

The man he approached turned out to be an informant for U.S. drug agents, who in return for leniency on drug charges against him had become a paid informant and had led U.S. agents to several drug seizures, according to the criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York.

Arbabsiar was introduced to the informant by a woman he had met when he previously worked as a used car salesman in Corpus Christi, Texas, two law enforcement officials said. She was the informant’s aunt.

The informant was not actually a member of Los Zetas but had worked with drug traffickers and was able to present himself as a Zeta to Arbabsiar.

A more savvy operative might have been suspicious when the informant set up meetings in Reynosa, Mexico, the territory of a rival gang where a Zeta would not be welcome.

The government charged that Arbabsiar had been told by his cousin Abdul Reza Shahlai, a high-ranking member of the Quds Force, to recruit a drug trafficker because drug gangs have a reputation for assassinations. The Zetas are known for the brutality of the beheadings, mass killings and grotesque mutilation of their victims.

As the covertly recorded meetings between Arbabsiar and the informant continued, the plot eventually centered on targeting Al-Jubeir in his favorite restaurant, though the informant didn’t name any specific restaurant, officials said.

There was also discussion between the two of possibly bombing other targets later, possibly including the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Argentina and the Israeli Embassy in Washington, two law enforcement officials said. But they emphasized that no plans were devised for such attacks, one reason this was not included in the criminal charge.

When the Iranian agent transferred more than $100,000 in two batches to the informant, U.S. authorities decided to act, senior U.S. officials said.

In addition to Arbabsiar, the criminal complaint named Gholam Shakuri, described as Shahlai’s deputy in the Quds Force who helped provide funding. Shahlai was identified by the Treasury Department in 2008, during George W. Bush’s administration, as a Quds deputy commander who planned a Jan. 20, 2007, attack in Karbala, Iraq, that killed five American soldiers and wounded three others.

Arbabsiar, Shakuri and Shahlai and two others — Qasem Soleimani, a Quds commander who allegedly oversaw the plot, and Hamed Abdollahi, a senior Quds officer who helped coordinate — were put under economic sanctions Tuesday by the Treasury for their alleged involvement. The department described all except Arbabsiar as Quds officers.

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Associated Press writers Alicia Caldwell, Matthew Lee, Pete Yost and Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.

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AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier can be followed on Twitter via (at)kimberlydozier

Iranians see Ahmadinejad as disconnected from alleged plot

By Thomas Erdbrink, Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Washington Post

TEHRAN — As Iranians struggled Wednesday to comprehend an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, analysts here agreed that even if U.S. charges of official Iranian involvement were true, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government likely had nothing to do with the scheme.

The security organizations that the United States says were behind the alleged plot — the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite special operations branch, the Quds Force — are well beyond Ahmadinejad’s influence. And leaders associated with them have played key roles in attacking Ahmadinejad during his recent rift with powerful Shiite Muslim clerics and commanders who helped bring him to power.

Amid new levels of infighting within Iran’s opaque leadership, Ahmadinejad at present wields no influence over the country’s two main intelligence and security organizations: the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. They are firmly under the control of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Even against the backdrop of this power struggle, Iranian dissidents and analysts are hard-pressed to come up with reasons for any of Iran’s leaders to undertake such a risky plot. Even if carried out successfully, it probably would have been quickly blamed on Iran, the analysts noted.

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday accused “elements of the Iranian government” of conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador. In addition to an Iranian American who was arrested in New York, officials named two alleged Iranian conspirators as Quds Force officials: Gholam Shakuri and Abdul Reza Shahlai. Shakuri, who was identified as a deputy to Shahlai, was charged in the case. Both remain at large. U.S. officials declined to say how high in the Iranian leadership they think the conspiracy goes.

Iranians interviewed Wednesday suggested various possible culprits in the alleged plot, ranging from the CIA to Revolutionary Guard elements to a rogue faction within Iran’s power structure.

“There are those within the Guards with some degree of independence,” said Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist critical of the government. “But I cannot point any fingers in this bizarre plot that only hurts Iran.”

What is clear, analysts said, is that the Islamic Republic’s security organizations are currently a black hole for the Ahmadinejad government, which is increasingly under fire from Intelligence Ministry officials as well as Revolutionary Guard commanders and hard-line Shiite clerics.

These critics recently called Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff and main adviser, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a “tumor” that needs to be cut out of the government. They have also threatened to launch impeachment proceedings against Ahmadinejad if he refuses to cut ties with advisers they describe as a “deviant current” bent on undermining the influence of the country’s ruling clerics.

Ahmadinejad publicly fell from grace in April when he tried to fire Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi, a Shiite cleric, but was forced to back down when Khamenei, the supreme leader, reinstated him.

Replacing Moslehi with someone from Ahmadinejad’s inner circle would have strengthened the president’s hand in the ministry. Now Ahmadinejad is facing public attacks from his former hard-line backers, who accuse him, among other things, of planning to restore relations with the United States.

Some analysts speculate that the bizarre alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was engineered by the Revolutionary Guards — but was meant to be discovered by U.S. intelligence — in order to sabotage any possible back-channel talks between Ahmadinejad’s representatives and the United States.

Others dismiss that theory, saying that the Iranian hierarchy’s control of foreign policy is clear. Khamenei makes the important foreign policy decisions, and extensive surveillance by political commissars leaves little room for rogue elements.

With Iran’s regional role in flux, some Iranians wonder whether the alleged plot could be related to developments closer to home.

Iranian officials admit privately to genuine worries over losing Syria as a strategic partner and say popular uprisings in the Middle East pose challenges, as well as opportunities. The ouster of entrenched rulers in the region is seen as reducing Iran’s role as a leader of oppressed movements.

“In the current status quo, Iran might lose, with now even Hamas trading prisoners with the Israelis,” one analyst said, referring to the Palestinian militant group. “Maybe they felt the need to make a great impact on their enemies.”

Others strongly disagreed, arguing that none of Iran’s security organizations would stake so much now on such an ill-conceived plot. “Iran’s leadership would never risk being involved in hitting someone on U.S. soil,” Zibakalam said. “Why would they endanger Iran in this way? This is really not logical.”

Yet, there is some precedent for such an act. In 1980, an American Muslim acting on behalf of the new revolutionary government in Tehran assassinated Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a monarchist living in exile in the Washington area, before fleeing to Iran.

As Iranians puzzle over the latest alleged plot, a realization appears to be setting in that, true or not, the allegations herald a dangerous period of increased tensions between Iran and the United States.

“Whoever is behind it — inside or outside the country — is determined to create an international front against Iran,” said Saeed Laylaz, a political analyst who was imprisoned in a crackdown on anti-government protests following Ahmadinejad’s disputed 2009 reelection. “The U.S. is gradually paving the way for a confrontation with Iran,” he said.

The Surreal Moments of the Underwear Bomber's Trial

The Atlantic Wire By Adam Martin | The Atlantic Wire – 10/12/2011

It's hard to imagine anything more serious than a trial on charges of international terrorism. The suspect faces life in prison and his would-be victims, who prosecutors say closely escaped a fiery death, offered testimony that sealed his fate. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009, pleaded guilty on Wednesday morning after just one day of testimony as federal prosecutors laid out their case against him. Abdulmutallab, you'll remember, tried to detonate a chemical bomb he had hidden in his underwear as the plane flew over Detroit, but after it flared up it failed to explode. Witnesses for the government on Tuesday described a chaotic scene in which passengers rushed to subdue a man bent on killing them over a major city. But for all its gravity, the short-lived Abdulmutallab trial has grabbed imaginations because of its abundance of surreal, and at times even funny, descriptions of his thwarted attack attempt. One thing about Abdulmutallab's guilty plea: It will save him further embarrassment at trial.
Related: Underwear Bomber Pleads to Guilty

"Dude, your pants are on fire": The quote that led the Detroit Free Press's coverage got wide play on Twitter. Los Angeles news anchor Pam Cook declared it the "quote of the week." Scott Cassel, a Twitter user following the story, encapsulated people's feeling about the line: "I know this is serious, but read it and see if u smile." The quote came from Michael Zantow, a passenger from Wisconsin, who sat behind Abdulmutallab and testified on Tuesday. From the Free Press's testimony blog:

Zantow noticed Abdulmuttalab put a blanket over his head, prompting a flight attendant to ask him if he was okay.

“I saw movement… as he was pulling an airline blanket over his head and shoulders,” said Zantow. After that, maybe 4-5 minutes later, Zantow heard a loud pop that sounded like a firecracker. He couldn’t tell exactly where it came from.

After the pop, “everyone kinda looked around,” Zantow said. About 30 seconds later, a passenger yelled: “Hey dude, your pants are on fire.”

Adult diapers: Reporters seemed to struggle to describe Abdulmutallab's "bulky" underwear in more serious terms. Zantow testified that "they were bulky and they were burning," and reportedly got a laugh from the jury when he compared them to child's pull-up diapers. The comparison made it into The New York Times, where reporter Monica Davey wrote that "his underwear looked peculiar, almost like a child’s pull-up or an adult diaper."
Related: Mystery Witnesses Revealed for Muslim Radicalization Hearings

Burned genitals: Shortly before the start of the trial, Abdulmutallab's standby defense lawyer, Anthony Chambers, moved to block a hospital photo showing Abdulmutallab's burned genitals from evidence. U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds denied the request, but prosecutors had not yet presented the photo when Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty. Now that he has conceded his guilt, he'll escape the embarrassment of having the picture shown in court.
Related: Two Iraqis Living in Kentucky Indicted on WMD Charges

Naked and defeated: Abdulmutallab wanted to go out in an explosion that would rock the United States on behalf of Al Qaeda, prosecutors allege. But when his chemical bomb failed to work, his situation turned into the exact opposite of that. Like a bad dream, Abdulmutallab had to sit out the rest of his flight to Detroit pantsless, burned, and restrained. The Free Press's testimony blog from Tuesday has more:

Tukel said the defendant pulled down his pants to push the plunger on the bomb. After a passenger put out the fire, he essentially sat naked from the waist down for the rest of the flight.

A man who sat with Abdulmutallab in the business section said the defendant admitted trying to ignite a bomb, Tukel said. A flight attendant seated across from Abdulmutallab talked with him. She asked him if he was in pain from burns. He nodded his head yes. She asked him what he had in his pocket. He didn’t answer. She asked again. He told her he had an explosive device, Tukel said.

Had enough: The giggles at his failed attempt seem to have gotten to Abdulmutallab. According to Wednesday's testimony blog, after he acknowledged his guilt, "he warned the U.S. that, if it continued to murder innocent Muslims, a calamity would befall the U.S. 'If you laugh at us now, we will laugh at you later,' he said."

Officials concede gaps in U.S. knowledge of Iran plot

Reuters By Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria | Reuters – 10/12/2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader and the shadowy Quds Force covert operations unit were likely aware of an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, but hard evidence of that is scant, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

The United States does not have solid information about "exactly how high it goes," one official said.

The Obama administration has publicly and directly blamed Iran's government for seeking to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, and has warned Tehran it will face consequences. The accusation has heightened tensions in the volatile, oil-rich Gulf.

Tehran has called the accusation a fabrication designed to sow discord in the region.

The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their confidence that at least some Iranian leaders were aware of the alleged plot was based largely on analyses and their understanding of how the Quds Force operates.

They said it was "more than likely" that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Quds Force commander Qasem Suleimani had prior knowledge or approved of the suspected plot. They insisted it was "not a rogue operation in any way," and was sanctioned and directed by Quds Force operatives in Iran.

But other parts of Iran's factionalized government may not have known, they said. That included President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who "didn't necessarily know about this," one said.

New details emerged about Manssor Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American and former Texas resident who is alleged to have tried to hire a Mexican drug cartel figure to assassinate al-Jubeir. That figure turned out to be a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant.

Arbabsiar, the only suspect known to be arrested in connection with the alleged plot, went by "Jack" and moved to Iran about a year ago, according to news reports.

Arbabsiar's wife, Martha Guerrero, told KVUE TV station in Austin, Texas, he was innocent. "I may not be living with him, being separated, but I cannot for the life of me think that he would be capable of doing that," she was quoted as saying.

'VERY OUTSIDE THE PATTERN'

Several senior U.S. government officials acknowledged the alleged plot was unusual in its poor tradecraft -- spy jargon for espionage skills and finesse.

"We would expect to see the Quds Force cover their tracks more effectively," said one official. Another said a plot to launch a violent attack inside the United States was "very outside the pattern" of recent Quds Force activities.

Kenneth Katzman, an Iran specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said there were elements of the alleged plot that did not make sense.

"The idea of using a Texas car salesman who is not really a Quds Force person himself, who has been in residence in the United States many years, that doesn't add up," Katzman said.

"There could have been some contact on this with the Quds Force, but the idea that this was some sort of directed, vetted, fully thought-through plot, approved at high levels in Tehran leadership I think defies credulity," he said.

The U.S. officials said Quds Force operations until now had principally involved providing covert Iranian support to anti-American and anti-Israeli militants and insurgents in the Middle East and South Asia.

But the officials also noted a history of antagonism between Iran's theocratic Shi'ite government and Saudi Arabia's Sunni monarchy. That hostility manifested itself in the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, a Saudi residential complex housing U.S. servicemen, in which U.S. officials say the Quds Force played a significant role.

Officials said the poor tradecraft and loose talk by Arbabsiar left open a strong possibility that officials in Tehran believed the U.S. government would not necessarily view an attack on Saudi Arabia's ambassador as an attack on the United States itself.

ACTIVE AGAINST U.S. OVERSEAS INTERESTS

Historically, Quds Force operatives have been active against U.S. interests overseas, including providing arms and other support to both Shi'ite and Sunni insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

Iranian government operatives or militant groups supported by Iran, such as the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hizbollah, have been implicated in attacks on U.S. and other Western targets, including bombings in the 1980s of the U.S. Embassy and a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in which 85 people died.

After his arrest, Arbabsiar confessed that a cousin in Iran, whom U.S. officials identified as Abdul Reza Shahlai, was a senior Quds Force official, the indictment against him said. Federal authorities say that under their supervision after his arrest, Arbabsiar discussed the alleged assassination plot on the phone with Gholam Shakuri, whom one U.S. official identified as a Quds Force "case officer," or agent handler.

A U.S. official said Shahlai in the past had come to the attention of U.S. security officials responsible for monitoring Quds Force activities. Another official said that after his arrest, Arbabsiar identified photographs of two Quds Force operatives that had been provided by U.S. intelligence.

U.S. officials said apart from their historical knowledge about how the Iranian leadership and Quds Force interact, they believed high-level Iranian government support for the plot was corroborated by the fact that Arbabsiar allegedly managed to arrange a $100,000 wire transfer to fund the plot.

The money passed through at least one Asian financial haven, one official said, adding the Iranians were relatively sloppy in concealing the funds' origin.

Fed up with Washington, wealthy boycott campaign fundraising

ReutersBy Jessica Toonkel | Reuters – 10/12/2011

(Reuters) - They might not be among the jobless protesting against Wall Street, but the rich are angry, too. Furious over U.S. government gridlock, the wealthy have their own form of protest: Refusing to make political contributions.

A number of financial advisers say their wealthy clients have told them they will not make political contributions this year, many for the first time ever.

Bessemer Trust CEO John Hilton says in his 42 years advising ultra high-net worth investors, he has never seen clients so frustrated with the state of affairs in Washington.

He said a number of the firm's clients - who have an average of $30 million in investable assets - say they believe a lack of leadership and political wrangling are the primary cause of recent market problems - and the declines in their portfolios. Because of that, they say they're saying no to requests to make political contributions.

"People are pissed," said Alan Ungar, an adviser with Critical Capital Management Inc. in Calabasas, California. His clients have an average $1.6 million or more in assets invested with the firm. "This isn't about taxes," he said. "It's about the partisan dynamic."

Political contributions from wealthy donors are crucial for presidential campaigns, said Michael Beckel, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks donations and their impact on elections and policy in the U.S.

Thirty-one percent of all individual donations came from people who donated $2,000 or more during the 2008 presidential elections, according to the Federal Election Commission. "We are definitely seeing a slower start in donors giving money than we did four years ago," Beckel said.

In the second quarter of 2007, Republican candidates raised about $115 million from individual donors. In the second quarter of this year, the latest crop of candidates raised about a third of that, according to the Campaign Finance Institute.

ON THE SIDELINES

The frustration among wealthy donors has been building throughout the year.

For months, Congress fought about raising the federal government's borrowing limit. An agreement to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending in August came just in time to avert a possible debt default but concerns about the gridlock and the nation's budget deficits led credit rating agency Standard & Poor's to remove the United States' triple-A rating.

In the weeks that followed, stock indexes have seen wild swings, including a record number of days of 400-plus point swings in the Dow Jones industrial average.

Markets have remained volatile since and the gridlock continues. On Tuesday, the Senate blocked President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs bill.

One client told Hilton that he was recently contacted by the political party he is affiliated with to make a contribution. He told Hilton that he declined, telling the caller that considering the situation in Washington and with his retirement account down 25 percent partly because of it, he didn't want to contribute.

In the Washington, D.C. area, wealthy donors are often active in fund-raising for presidential campaigns. This year, many are sitting on the sidelines, said Ted Halpern, a Rockville, Maryland-based financial adviser whose average client has more than $2 million in assets.

"My clients are the ones who are usually hosting fund-raisers at their homes," he said. Many have historically been staunch Democrats, but Halpern said this year some say they might vote for a Republican because they hope a change will lead to action of some kind in Washington, Halpern said.

"There is just a lot of resentment out there," he said.

Jim Heitman, an adviser with Compass Financial Planning in Alta Loma, California, whose average account size is $1.3 million, said several of his clients are usually active in their parties. But this year, they're doing less and some are using the money they earmark for political contributions to pay off mortgages on vacation homes or to invest in alternative assets like gold, he said.

"The attitude is increasingly 'a pox on both their houses,'" Heitman said.

How an alleged plot to assassinate Saudi ambassador was discovered along the Mexican border

10/11/2011
By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, October 12, 2:45 AM

WASHINGTON — The unraveling of an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States came from a surprising place — the front lines of the drug war along the Mexican border.

And like a Hollywood thriller, the murder-for-hire tale cuts back and forth across international lines. “This case illustrates we live in a world where borders and boundaries are increasingly irrelevant,” said FBI Director Robert Mueller.

According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York, the plot was revealed by an informant inside the world of the Mexican drug trade, a man paid by U.S. drug agents to rat out traffickers.

The complaint describes the informant as someone who was previously charged for violating drug laws in the United States but got the charges dismissed by agreeing to cooperate with U.S. drug investigations. U.S. officials trusted the informant because he had proved reliable in the past and led to several drug seizures — and the informant was paid for those tips.

In May 2011, the informant allegedly met with a Texas man named Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who also had an Iranian passport. The complaint doesn’t say how the two were introduced, but Arbabsiar reportedly approached the informant, who he thought was an associate of a drug cartel well known for its violent tactics, to ask about his knowledge of explosives for an attack on a Saudi embassy.

The informant reached out to his contacts in the United States to tell them all about it. Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was told the informant was “somebody who was in one of the drug cartels, credible, long history, was fully capable of conducting the kind of operation the Iranian was asking for.”

“This guy brought it to us, and from there it was laid out in front of us as they went forward,” the Michigan Republican said.

The complaint said Arbabsiar and the informant met several more times in Mexico over the next few months, with the informant secretly recording their conversations for U.S. authorities. The two spoke English and their discussions became more focused on a specific target for violence — the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, a U.S.-educated commoner sent to the United States to repair relations after the Sept. 11 attacks who has been ambassador since 2007.

The complaint said Arbabsiar has fully confessed to his role in the operation and said he was recruited, funded and directed by Iran’s special foreign actions unit known as the Quds Force. Arbabsiar said his cousin Abdul Reza Shahlai was a high-ranking member of the Quds Force who approached him this past spring to ask for his cooperation. Arbabsiar said he frequently traveled between the U.S. and Mexico for work and knew people he believed were in the drug trade, and his cousin asked him if he could recruit someone in the narcotics business for criminal activity.

U.S. officials say Shahlai has a violent past — the Bush administration accused him of planning a Jan. 20, 2007, attack in Karbala, Iraq, that killed five American soldiers and wounded three others. This time, according to U.S. officials, Shahlai and other Quds agents approved a plot to pay their Mexican drug contact $1.5 million for the death of the ambassador — making a $100,000 down payment to an account the informant provided.

According to transcripts of their recorded conversations cited in the complaint, the informant told Arbabsiar he would kill the ambassador however he wanted — “blow him up or shoot him” — and Arbabsiar responded he should use whatever method was easiest. The plot eventually centered on targeting Al-Jubeir in his favorite restaurant and Arbabsiar was quoted as saying killing him alone would be better, “but sometime, you know, you have no choice.” Arbabsiar dismisses the possibility that 100-150 others in the restaurant could be killed along with the ambassador as “no problem” and “no big deal.”

Eventually, according to the complaint, the informant told Arbabsiar he must come to Mexico to offer himself as “collateral” for the final payment of the $1.5 million fee for the assassination. Arbabsiar said his cousin’s deputy at the Quds Force — Gholam Shakuri, also charged in the complaint but at large in Iran — warned him against offering himself as a guarantee of payment. But Arbabsiar went anyway, boarding a flight to Mexico on Sept. 28 with plans to fly to Iran after the plot was finished.

Mexican authorities, who say they had been cooperating with U.S. officials in the investigation, denied Arbabsiar entry into the country and he boarded a flight to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Law enforcement officials secretly boarded with him to keep him under surveillance, and he was arrested when he got off the plane in New York.

Arbabsiar agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities and made several recorded phone calls to Shakuri in which they discussed the purchase of a “Chevrolet,” their agreed-upon code-word for the plot. Shakuri urged Arbabsiar to make sure they “just do it quickly.”

___

AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.

Iran behind alleged terrorist plot, U.S. says

By Jerry Markon and Karen DeYoung,
Published: October 11
Updated: Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Washington Post

U.S. officials on Tuesday accused elements of the Iranian government of plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, allegations that aggravated the tense relationship between the United States and the Islamic Republic.

The Justice Department unsealed charges against two Iranians — one of them a U.S. citizen — accusing them of orchestrating an elaborate murder-for-hire plot that targeted Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi envoy to Washington and a key adviser to King Abdullah. The Iranians planned to employ Mexican drug traffickers to kill Jubeir with a bomb as he ate at a restaurant, U.S. officials said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that “the United States is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions,” but other officials indicated that it was not yet clear who in the Iranian government was behind the alleged plot.

“There’s a question of how high up did it go,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House thinking. “The Iranian government has a responsibility to explain that.”

Federal authorities said they foiled the plan because the Iranian American, Mansour Arbabsiar, happened to hire a paid informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration to carry it out. Arbabsiar, 56, was arrested Sept. 29 in New York and later implicated Iranian officials in Tehran in directing the plot, U.S. officials said.

In addition to Jubeir, officials said, the plot envisioned later striking other targets in the United States and abroad, including a Saudi embassy, though those plans appeared preliminary at best. Arbabsiar has acknowledged that he was recruited and funded by men he understood to be senior officers in the Quds Force, an elite division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for foreign operations, court documents say.

An Iran-based member of that force, Gholam Shakuri, is also charged in federal court in New York with conspiracy to murder a foreign official and to commit an act of international terrorism, along with other counts.

The Iranian government denied the accusations, calling them a new round of “American propaganda” and saying they were fabricated to divert attention from U.S. economic troubles and the Occupy Wall Street protests.

“The U.S. government and the CIA have very good experience in making up film scripts,” Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a spokesman for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said in Tehran. “It appears that this new scenario is for diverting the U.S. public opinion from internal crises.”

Ali Larijani, Iran’s former top nuclear negotiator and current head of parliament, described the U.S. allegations Wednesday as “silly and mischievous.” He told the semiofficial Mehr News Agency: “They made noises that they arrested those who wanted to bomb the Saudi Embassy. Foolish words that, by using expanded media coverage, were clearly meant to cover up their internal problems.” He added: “We have normal relations with the Saudis. There is no reason that Iran wants to do these childish things they accuse us of.”

Quick U.S. reaction

The Treasury Department also announced financial sanctions against Shakuri, three other Quds Force officials and Arbabsiar, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the administration would work with allies to devise more actions to isolate the Islamic Republic.

The State Department also issued a worldwide travel alert for U.S. citizens over the suspected Iranian plot.

“The U.S. government assesses that this Iranian-backed plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador may indicate a more aggressive focus by the Iranian government on terrorist activity against diplomats from certain countries, to include possible attacks in the United States,” the department said in a statement on its Web site. The travel alert expires Jan. 11, 2012.

Arbabsiar appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and was ordered held without bail in a proceeding that did not require him to enter a plea. His court-appointed attorney, Sabrina Shroff, said outside the court that he would plead not guilty, Bloomberg News reported. Shakuri remains at large in Iran.

Shiite-dominated Iran and Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia are longtime rivals for regional dominance, a contest that moved into high gear with the U.S. elimination of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein as a powerful buffer between them and began to play out in proxy battles in Lebanon, Bahrain and elsewhere.

But some specialists on Iran expressed skepticism that the Islamic Republic would resort to killing a prominent Saudi official — a virtual act of war against that country — in the U.S. capital.

“Why would Iran want to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington?” said Alireza Nader, an Iran expert at the Rand Corp. “I’m not discounting the evidence necessarily, and Iran has a long history of supporting terrorism. But plots against the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., would be outside that norm.”

Other experts said the seemingly unusual method of carrying out the assassination — recruiting what the plotters thought was a Mexican drug trafficker — made sense. “Let’s face it: The level of scrutiny in Mexico is less,” said Fred Burton, a former State Department security specialist who monitors threats in Mexico for the Stratfor group.

Mexican drug cartels are now multifaceted, transnational criminal organizations that have developed increasingly sophisticated car bombs. U.S. federal agents have said the Mexican mafia’s learning curve — from crude pipe bombs to radio-triggered plastic explosives — has been rapid.

U.S. officials declined to comment on Iran’s motive for the alleged plot, saying that the information is classified and that they are continuing to investigate. They also would not specify the other possible targets, declining to confirm other media reports that they included the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington.

‘A deadly plot’

Officials described the details of the plan as chilling, with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III saying that “though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real, and many lives would have been lost.’’

The plot dates to early spring, when a cousin of Arbabsiar’s, a senior member of the Quds Force, approached him while he was in Iran about a plan to kidnap Jubeir, according to court documents. The criminal complaint does not identify the cousin, but a Treasury Department release issued Tuesday said a cousin of Arbabsiar named Abdul Reza Shahlai, a Quds Force official, “coordinated the plot” and approved financial payments.

Arbabsiar allegedly told the cousin that he did business on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border and knew a number of drug traffickers. The cousin told Arbabsiar that he should hire a trafficker to carry out the plot “because people in that business are willing to undertake criminal activity in exchange for money,” according to the complaint.

It remains unclear what led Arbabsiar to the person identified only as CS-1. The confidential DEA source, referred to by Arbabsiar as “the Mexican” in meetings tape-recorded by the source, was described in court papers only as a paid informant who was once charged in the United States with a drug offense.

The charges were dropped because the informant has provided valuable information in a number of cases, and in this instance, he quickly notified federal agents that Arbabsiar had contacted him, according to court documents and federal officials.

The two began a series of meetings in Mexico in May that quickly turned to discussing the killing of Jubeir, the documents say. Jubeir, the son of a Saudi diplomat, is one of the most powerful foreign policymakers outside the royal family.

The informant told Arbabsiar that he would need four men to carry out the assassination. His alleged price: $1.5 million.

Shakuri, identified by Treasury as a deputy to Shahlai, gave Arbabsiar thousands of dollars to fund the plot, court documents say. As a down payment, Arbabsiar allegedly arranged for nearly $100,000 to be wired to an account that was secretly overseen by the FBI.

For the site of the bombing, the informant suggested a Washington restaurant where Jubeir “goes out and eat[s] like two times a week,” according to the recordings. When the informant noted that bystanders could be killed in the attack, including U.S. senators, Arbabsiar dismissed these concerns as “no big deal,” court documents say.

“They want that guy [the ambassador] done [killed],” Arbabsiar reportedly said. Federal authorities said the informant was never referring to an actual restaurant.

According to the Justice Department, Arbabsiar was arrested by federal agents while on a layover at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after being denied entry in Mexico. Arbabsiar waived his Miranda rights against self-incrimination and has provided “extremely valuable intelligence,” according to a letter prosecutors sent last week to a federal judge in New York updating her on the status of his detention.

A team of law enforcement agents has been working “virtually around the clock since the defendant’s arrest,’’ it said.

Staff writers Jason Ukman, Scott Wilson and Greg Miller, correspondents Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran and William Booth in Mexico City, and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.