A tangled tale

For the record: I don’t know if there was a genuine Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. Let me repeat that: I don’t know. And neither do you. All we know is that the U.S. government claims to have uncovered such a plot, involving an Iranian-American used-car salesman who allegedly was getting direction from some part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. This dangerous criminal mastermind reportedly thought he was paying a Mexican drug cartel to conduct the actual attacks, when he was in fact dealing with an undercover DEA agent.

As I said, none of us really know what was going on here, but several features ought to be kept in mind. First, the Iranian government is by all accounts a contentious and unruly body, and it is possible that some rogue element of the Revolutionary Guards came up with this cockamamie but obviously despicable scheme. Whether Supreme Leader Khamenei or President Ahmadinejad had anything to do with it, of course, is another matter entirely.

Second, the FBI doesn’t have a terrific track record in identifying and documenting this sort of conspiracy, and we’d be fools to take their accusations at face value. There is sometimes a fine line between uncovering a real terrorist plot and subtly encouraging one, as in the famous case of the "Miami Seven," whose plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago appears to have been largely inspired by the undercover agent who eventually exposed them. Until we know a lot more about the actual time line and evidence behind these latest accusations, a certain skepticism is warranted. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the government eventually reveals that the evidence of direct Iranian involvement is based on intercepted signals intelligence, which it will then claim it cannot make public without compromising sources and/or methods. In other words, just trust us…

Third, before we leap to the conclusion that this is more evidence of how heinous Iran’s revolutionary leadership is, let’s pause to remember that the United States and some of our allies have done similar things in the past. We tried to bomb Muammar al-Qaddafi’s tent back in the 1980s, and the CIA tried to kill Fidel Castro and a few other foreign leaders back in the 1960s. And the United States has certainly backed various groups that used assassination and other forms of terrorism to advance their political aims, such as the Nicaraguan contras. Some of you might think that these efforts were justified; my point is simply that we aren’t wholly innocent in this regard. That doesn’t justify what Iran is accused of doing, but it might temper our own moral outrage a bit.

Lord knows there’s plenty of grounds for concern about various Iranian actions (including their reliance on murder and/or sabotage on several occasions in the past), and no shortage of conflicts of interest between Tehran and Washington. But this story is sufficiently bizarre — would a real Iranian agent actually try to hire a drug cartel to do his dirty work? — and the potential consequences are sufficiently grave that we really ought to wait until we know more before drawing any conclusions at all.