Patrick Cockburn on the Iran/Mr. Magoo case

Patrick Cockburn, who has been one of the best reporters on the Iraq War, writes about the alleged Iran/Mr. Magoo plot in This bizarre plot goes against all that is known of Iran's intelligence service Independent 10/13/2011:

The confident announcement of this bizarre plot by the US Attorney General Eric Holder sounds alarmingly similar to Secretary of State Colin Powell's notorious claim before the UN in 2003 that the US possessed irrefutable evidence Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Cockburn also refers to money coming from "a known IRGC bank account to hire assassins in Mexico," but I still haven't seen if there's any official US claim to that effect.

Cockburn reminds us of some of the current politics involved with Iran:

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have been vociferously asserting that Iran is orchestrating Shia pro-democracy protests, but without finding many believers in the rest of the world. Their claims are now likely to be taken more seriously in Washington. There will be less pressure on countries like Bahrain to accommodate their Shia populations.

In Iraq, the US and Britain were always seeing Iran's hidden hand supporting their opponents, but they could never quite prove it. It was also true, to a degree never appreciated in the US, that Washington and Tehran were at one in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and installing a Shia government. There were points in common and a struggle for influence. The same has been true in Afghanistan, where Iran was delighted to see the anti-Shia Taliban overthrown in 2001.

Tags: arbabsiar case, iran, iran war, patrick cockburn