An Iranian terror plot?

The U.S. stepped up sanctions on Iran this week after accusing it of hatching a bizarre plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil. Attorney General Eric Holder said the Iranians planned to kill Saudi envoy Adel Al-Jubeir by bombing a crowded restaurant in Washington, D.C., causing the deaths of scores of others. Authorities uncovered the scheme when Iranian-American Mansour Arbabsiar hired a Mexican hit man who was an informant of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Arbabsiar, 56, was arrested Sept. 29 in New York City and later implicated Iranian officials, including a cousin in Iran’s elite Quds Force, which reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Iran denied the charges. “The U.S. government and the CIA have very good experience in making up film scripts,” said presidential spokesman Ali Akbar Javanfekr.

“This plot comes so far out of left field” that it doesn’t make sense, said Max Fisher in TheAtlantic.com. Why would Iran kill the Saudi ambassador, an act that would only bring the U.S. and Saudi Arabia closer together? Why use a Mexican drug cartel? According to the indictment, a member of the Quds Force wired almost $100,000 into the U.S. for the hit. “Does that sound like an intel service to you?”

Don’t be too surprised, said Kenneth Pollack in TheDailyBeast​.com. Iran has been markedly more aggressive in the past two years, ramping up support for radical Shiite groups in Iraq and arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. This plot, if true, means that Iran is now “willing to go way beyond anything it has ever done before to strike blows against the United States”—and that it no longer fears U.S. military retaliation.

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Iran obviously “sees itself as at war with the U.S.,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. When a U.S. informant said the assassination would cause mass U.S. casualties, Arbabsiar allegedly replied, “They want that guy done; if the hundred go with him, f--- ’em.” Iran has far greater resources than al Qaida ever did, and now it is ready to use them to commit terrorist acts on U.S. soil. “It’s past time for U.S. policy toward Iran to reflect the reality of what it is dealing with.”