If only they had picked the right Mexican: Why I think the Iran-Saudi terror case is for real

As I watched Attorney General Eric Holder’s miserable performance at the joint press conference he called with FBI Director Robert Mueller and other DOJ officials on Tuesday to announce the Iranian assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States, it was hard to believe the case they were alleging.

I have tracked Iranian terrorism for almost 30 years, and I’ve never seen such sloppy tradecraft as what the feds were alleging in this case. The chief terror operator for Iran’s dreaded Quds Force was an Iranian-American used-car dealer with a rap sheet from Texas, who traveled back and forth to Iran to see his family? Really?

And this “mope,” as some in DOJ are calling him, was so plugged into the highest levels of the Quds Force terror masters that they sent him $100,000 in two wire transfers from an overseas bank, in spite of post-9/11 “know your customer” rules supposed to automatically report to the feds any wire transfer over $10K? Hard to believe.

Making matters worse was Holder’s performance. After the fake humility (standing aside from the podium to see which official journalists addressed their question to), he lingered on and took one square in the face about the impending congressional subpoena for Fast and Furious. After a curt reply, he walked off the stage and shut down the show.

It all smacked of a political contrivance. And that’s a shame. Because Holder’s performance — even his presence, really — did a disservice to the men and women who investigated this case in the FBI and the Southern District of New York, and who laid out the facts (at least, some of them) in a 21-page charging document.

Here is what convinced me:

1) The Cousin

The “mope” (a.k.a. 56-year-old defendant Manssor Arbabsiar) claims he is the cousin of a very senior terror master within the Quds Force, and refers to his “cousin” repeatedly in the indictment. Cousin Quds was “a big general in [the] army” who was “wanted in America” and had been “on the CNN.” He was the one who asked the “mope” to find someone to carry out the assassination of the Saudi ambassador (what was he thinking?). DOJ should have identified the cousin, but referred to him only as “Iranian Official #1.”

It took a simultaneous press release by the Department of Treasury to identify the cousin as Abdul Reza Shahlai. His rap sheet? According to Treasury, which originally designated him as an international terrorist in 2008, Shahlai was a “deputy commander” in the IRGC-Quds Force and planned “Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) Special Groups attacks against Coalition Forces in Iraq.” One of the attacks he planned was the 2007 raid in Karbala during which Iranian-trained operatives posing as American soldiers abducted and eventually murdered five U.S. soldiers.

Shahlai is the real deal. He’s no two-bit player, or opposition plant trying to embarrass the regime. (For more on Shahlai, see Thomas Josceleyn’s excellent article at The Long War Journal.)

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