Gary Sick on the alleged Iranian/Zetas plot

Gary Sick, a real live expert on Iran who worked in Jimmy Carter's White House on the hostage crisis decades ago now, writes about the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US in Did Iran launch a plot against the US? Gary's Choices 10/12/2011:

I find this [alleged plot] very hard to believe. In fact, this plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures.

To be sure, Iran has plenty of reasons to be angry at both the United States and Saudi Arabia. They attribute the recent wave of assassinations of physics professors and students, as well as the intrusion of the Stuxnet worm, to the US and Israel. And the king of Saudi Arabia is reliably reported to have called for the US to bomb Iran.

Iran has reportedly been involved in past assassinations in Europe and bombings in Argentina and elsewhere. But the assassinations were of Iranian counter-revolutionaries in the 1980s, and the bombings were always carried out by trusted proxies — normally a branch of Hezbollah. Iran’s fingerprints were always concealed beneath one or more layers of disguise.

The Argentina reference is presumably to the 1994 AMIA Jewish Community Center attack in Buenos Aires; Iranian participation on that one remains unproven and, from what I've see, dubious.

He thinks the allegation of official Iranian involvement is exceptionally shaky based on what we know so far:

Iran has never conducted — or apparently even attempted — an assassination or a bombing inside the US. And it is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions. In this instance, they allegedly relied on at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and US intelligence agents.

Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted for utter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft, e.g. discussing an ultra-covert operation on an open international line between Iran and the US. Yet that is what happened here.

He also draws this conclusion: "If Iran is really as stupid and as incompetent as this case implies, then perhaps they are their own worst enemy and not the clever and determined adversary that they are made out to be."

Tags: gary sick, iran, iran war