Concocting an Iranian plot

Here comes another in the long line of U.S. lies, said Mohammad Safari in the Tehran Siyasat-e Ruz. First we saw the so-called attacks of 9/11, “in which the U.S. struck itself” and blamed terrorists in order to provide a pretext for invading Afghanistan. Then came the lie of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which became the excuse for invading Iraq. And now the U.S. has conjured up a story about an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Adel al-Jubeir. Why now? Because the Americans are “desperate to deflect attention” from the Occupy Wall Street movement that has the country under siege. “More than 1,000 U.S. cities” are participating in the “people’s protests against the policies of the ruling government.” The far-fetched plot revealed last weekend, which entails at least two Iranians conspiring with a Mexican hit man to commit terrorism on U.S. soil, “has been scripted” to simply change the subject.

The timing is indeed curious, said the Tehran Mardom Salari in an editorial. The news that two Iranian citizens have been indicted comes just a few weeks after Iran released two U.S. citizens who had been caught near the Iraqi border and claimed to be hikers. Could the trumped-up terror plot be payback for Iran’s holding of the two? Or is it related to Iran’s success at the U.N.? asked Kaveh L. Afrasiabi in the London Middle-East-Online.com. Iran has recently made “genuine overtures toward a reasonable resolution of the nuclear standoff,” expanding its cooperation with the U.N.’s nuclear agency and even offering to suspend uranium enrichment. How convenient that the U.S. now has the “manna from heaven of the foiled plot” to use as an excuse to push for further international isolation of Iran.

It’s not only the U.S. that benefits from this accusation, said Seyyed Hamid Hoseyni in the Mashhad, Iran, Khorasan News. It’s highly possible “that the Saudi government played a role in concocting the scenario.” After all, while the Arab Spring hasn’t yet reached Saudi Arabia, there have been sporadic protests in areas populated by the Shiite minority. It would be most convenient for the Saudis to be able to blame those protests on Iranian provocations, citing the U.S. plot as part of a pattern of Iranian hostility. Then the regime would have reason to “harshly suppress the protesters.”

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Unfortunately, the plot seems to be all too real, said the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Al-Jazirah. Iran’s international terrorist activities are well known. And the pattern of paying local criminals to carry out its dirty work fits, too—that’s what Iran has done in past operations all over the world, “including in Argentina, Germany, Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, and Bahrain.” The motive is also obvious. The assassination of our diplomat on U.S. soil would surely have “caused a crack in Saudi-U.S. ties.” Iran has always been jealous of Saudi Arabia’s pre-eminent role in the region, said the Jeddah Saudi Gazette. “It will not give up its vicious efforts to destabilize its neighbors.” Only a firm international response can contain it.