Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Gareth Porter published an important story about the alleged Iran terror plot.  In it he notes that nowhere in the Justice Department criminal complaint does it say that Arbabsiar ever agreed to assassinate anyone.  In fact, it is the DEA agent who repeatedly attempts to introduce and re-introduce the notion of perpetrating an act of terror.  At no point do the charges say the Iranian ever suggested this or agreed to it.

Porter says that what’s much more likely is that the alleged terror suspect was first drawn into the web by the prospect of doing a drug deal:

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.

…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”.

In fact, in today’s NY Times a reporter interviewed neighbors who noted that young people entered and exited the suspect’s house at all hours of the day and night.  It made them think that drugs were being dealt there.

The IPS reporter notes that the IRG controls a huge volume of drug trafficking in nearby Afghanistan and that they have begun to ship heroin around the world including to Mexican drug cartels.  It appears that the paid DEA informant, himself a drug dealer, first approached Arbabsiar not about an act of terror, but about a drug deal.  The Iranian was only, as far as the records show, interested in doing a drug deal.  He listened to the tales of the DEA agent only because he was being strung along to believe there was a drug deal in the making:

…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.

…Not a single quote from Arbabsiar shows that he agreed to assassinating the ambassador, much less proposed it, suggest[ing] 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.

Interestingly, the FBI complaint doesn’t mention any discussion about drugs.  I wonder why?

This is not only entrapment, it is the government lying about the basic nature of the case.  Manssor Arbabsiar appears to be a wannabe Texas drug dealer who had connections holding product via his cousin, who may or may not be affiliated with the IRG.  That the IRG deals in drugs I have no doubt.  But the claim that the IRG plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador or anyone remains about the lamest claim ever to come out of the Obama administration.

I feel a real sense of betrayal regarding Obama.  I expected crap like this from Bush and Cheney.  You knew they were going to cheat and lie to advance their political agenda.  But Obama?  Why?  Why does he need to do this?  What does he gain by this even if half of the charges are true (which I’m convinced they’re not)?  He gets new sanctions against Iran?  Big deal?  Maybe he even uses this to forestall an Israeli attack on Iran.  But why risk a huge black eye if the case goes to s(^t as it appears it will?  Where are those killer political instincts we thought we saw during the presidential election campaign?  Abandoned him, it appears.

I winced when I read in today’s Times that Barack Obama has now staked a bit of his own presidential credibility (diminishing as it is) on supporting the increasingly desperate tale told by his Justice Department about the alleged Iran terror plot.

Mr. Obama insisted that American officials “know that he had direct links, was paid by, and directed by individuals in the Iranian government.”

“Now those facts are there for all to see,” Mr. Obama said. “We would not be bringing forward a case unless we knew exactly how to support all the allegations that are contained in the indictment.”

This guy is not just a lawyer, not just a Harvard trained lawyer, but a constitutional scholar.  He, of all people, should know that accusations are not facts until proven in a court of law, and we’re a LONG way from there.  It’s really shameful for him to use the term at all, and deeply prejudicial to the detainee’s (I almost want to say “victim”) chance for a fair trial.

All I can say is that if Obama’s so sure of the evidence he should release enough of it to allow the public to make its own informed judgment.  If he wishes to hold his cards close to his vest, then he has only himself to blame if people see him, and his attorney general as doddering fools.

The State Department itself is getting into the buffoonish doings.  In an implicit acknowledgement of the comparisons to the plot of the film, Fast and Furious, its spokesperson said this:

“When you look at these details, it seems like something out of a movie,” Ms. Nuland acknowledged in her remarks about the alleged plot. “But as you begin to give more detail on what we knew and when we knew it and how we knew it, it has credibility.”

There’s a reason why it seems like something out of a movie, and quite a bad one at that, unless it was one based on an Elmore Leonard novel.  Because it is one.  Then you’ll notice Nuland posits an imaginary audience (certainly not the American people) which has been offered the information which she claims to know–et voilà–all of a sudden, it has credibility.  How it manages to gain credibility is a mystery, which is why it might make a great Elmore Leonard novel.  The question is, who do we cast as Arbabsiar?  Maybe Travolta or Nicholas Cage or Matt Damon as the hapless boob?  It has promise–as a movie.

Anyone have any movie title ideas?  Keeping with the Fast and Furious concept, perhaps Fast and Delirious?  Or Dumb, Dumber and Eric Holder?

Obama is muttering about sanctions and seems to harbor the delusion that this new development will cause Russian and China to change their tunes and endorse even more punitive sanctions than currently exist.  What it will do is give Putin and Hu Jintao a good laugh, I’m afraid.

Glenn Greenwald notes that Obama administration officials are suggesting that the attempt to kill the Saudi ambassador might be revenge for the killing of three Iranian nuclear scientists.  For them to say this as much as concedes U.S. complicity in those attacks, which have widely been credited to Israel and/or the U.S.  While they might argue that the Iranians have accused the U.S. of involvement–it beggars belief that a nation would attempt a terror attack on foreign soil if it didn’t know for a fact that the victim nation was guilty of an attack against it.

Greenwald also notes the absolute inanity of Iran striking out against the murderers of its scientists by attacking Saudi Arabia.  Why would it do that as opposed to attacking specific U.S. or Israeli interests?  Saudi Arabia certainly had nothing to do with those assassinations.

Which brings up yet another question: if the supposed attack on the Saudi diplomat was a terror attack what does that make the killings of the Iranian scientists?  A terror attack of course. So why isn’t the world clamoring for sanctions against the country almost everyone knows was behind it?  I suppose one might argue that the ambassador is a diplomat and the scientists were accused of helping develop nuclear weapons (though there is no proof of this).  And if you want to go there, what would we say if a German or Japanese agent had assassinated our top nuclear scientists, Edward Teller or J. Robert Oppenheimer, during the Cold War?  Terror is terror is terror.