Did Iran Really Sanction Such Bumbling?

The Iranian plot to blow up the Saudi ambassador in Washington reads like a Hollywood script, said FBI head Robert Mueller. It does, but not a very good one.

The plot probably would not get past first pitch in an LA script meeting.

And that is America's problem as they try to gather international support for greater sanctions on Iran.

What the US government is not making clear is how high up the plot was approved by Iranians. Did it have the backing of the Khamenei regime or was it the work of a rogue element?

Mansoor Arbabsiar may have been an agent of the Qods special operations unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. But not a very good one by all accounts.

He has a record for petty and more serious offences going back to 1993, 1996, 1997, 2001 and 2004. Not exactly off the law enforcement radar then.

"He's no mastermind", in the words of someone who knows him in Texas. He was a second-hand car salesman well known to the Sheriff's department of his home town, it seems.

So imagine the meeting in Tehran. Senior members of the Qods Force and officials of the Khamenei regime are discussing blowing up the Saudi ambassador in a restaurant in Washington DC.

They know a terrorist outrage on those proportions in the US capital would have enormous repercussions if traced back to Iran.

Would they choose someone like Arbabsiar with a law enforcement record as long as the sleeves of his second-hand car salesman coat with countless police mug shots circulating?

Probably not. More likely this was maverick opportunism by a rogue element of the Qods Force.

Its involvement seems established by the \$100,000 (about £63,400) down payment made from one of its bank accounts to what it believed was a member of a Mexican drug cartel.

That makes the plot chilling, if bizarre. Someone in Iran financed a plan that could have killed many innocent civilians in a restaurant in Washington and sparked hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran and drawn in America as well.

But did the order come from higher up? It is far from clear but it is important because it affects the way America responds to the plot.

Arbabsiar was not only not very good but also unlucky. Of all the members of all the drug cartels in all of Mexico, he happened to choose an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Agency. His plans were exposed.

You wonder whether the Iranians are more annoyed by the fact the plot was exposed or that the world is being led to believe one of its elite special operations forces could operate in such a bumbling, cack-handed way.

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