On September 28, of last year, the FBI put a halt to an alleged plot to murder the Saudi Ambassador to the United States with explosives. The Justice Department reported the alleged design was directed by elements of the Iranian government. Although the U.S. never publicly acknowledged the place, Georgetown’s Café Milano is reportedly believed to have been the intended scene of an assassination attempt on the life of Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, while he ate lunch there.
One of the two suspects, Mansour Arbabsiar, 56, is currently in custody pending a trial in federal court in Manhattan, NY. As pre-trial litigation continues, no trial date has been set. Gholam Shakuri, the other suspect and a member of Iran’s Quds Force, remains at large in Iran, U.S. officials reported. The alleged scheme, which was clumsy but nevertheless aggressive, has exposed a trail of Iranian operations in the Washington, D.C. area that were running seamlessly out of the public’s view. Arbabsiar was a used car salesman from Texas, who went to Mexico City to find a hit man to carry out the assassination in the District. The hit man was fortunately an undercover U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration asset. Representative Mike Rogers, R-MI, and chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee reported that Iranian spies are very forward-leaning. “They’re well-trained. They’re trained by the former Soviet Union and Russian intelligence. So they’ve got state of the art training,” Rogers said.
