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"Iran Claims Terror Plot Accusation Is Diversion by U.S."
On 10/12/2011 at 5:44:48 PM, Trainwreck started the thread:
Story:

"Iran’s leaders marshaled a furious formal rejection on Wednesday of the United States accusations that the Islamic republic had schemed to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, calling the case a cynical fabrication meant to vilify Iran and distract Americans from their own severe economic problems, highlighted by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Foreign Ministry of Iran issued an angry complaint to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which is responsible for monitoring United States interests in Iran since the two broke diplomatic relations 32 years ago after the Islamic Revolution. The ministry said it had summoned the Swiss ambassador to personally convey its outrage over the American charges and warn “against the repetition of such politically motivated allegations.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, went a step further. In a speech broadcast on Iran state television, he predicted what he called the demise of American capitalism and corporate favoritism. Press TV, an Iran government Web site that translated portions of the ayatollah’s speech, said he emphasized that “the corrupted capitalist system shows no mercy to any nation, including the American people.”

The ayatollah commended the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, Washington and other American cities, calling them a consequence of “the prevalence of top-level corruption, poverty and social inequality in America.” He denounced what he called “the heavy-handed treatment of the demonstrators by U.S. officials” and said that such treatment “is not seen even in underdeveloped countries with dictatorial regimes.”

“They may crack down on this movement but cannot uproot it,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “Ultimately, it will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the West.”

The semi-official Fars news agency drew the connection more explicitly in an article with the headline: “U.S. Accusations Against Iran Aim to Divert World Attention from Wall Street Uprising.” The article quoted a senior member of Iran’s Parliament, Alaoddin Boroujerdi, as saying he had “no doubt this is a new American-Zionist plot to divert the public opinion from the crisis Obama is grappling with.”

The Iranian government had previously referred to the Occupy Wall Street protests as a nascent American version of the revolutionary wave that has swept through the Middle East this year, dubbing the protests an “American spring.”

In the Iranian plot outlined on Tuesday by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in Washington, officials in the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are accused of scheming to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States by hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million. The main suspects were identified as Mansour J. Arbabsiar, a naturalized American citizen of Iranian descent from Corpus Christi, Tex., who has been taken into custody, and Gholam Shakuri, described by the Justice Department as a member of the Quds Force, who is at large and believed to be in Iran.

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, declined to elaborate on who among Iran’s hierarchy are suspected of complicity. “We know from the facts that it clearly involved senior levels of the Quds force,” he told reporters at the daily White House briefing in Washington on Wednesday. “But that is as specific as I am going to be."

The accusations, which even many Iran experts in the United States greeted with some measure of disbelief, appear to have not only significantly elevated the antagonism between Iran and the United States but also deepened the mistrust between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia made its first public comments on the case, condemning the plot outlined by the Americans but stopping short of taking any action to sever or downgrade relations with Iran. The Saudis are renowned for their conservatism in taking action, and pointedly, the country’s statement followed a similar response by the secretary general of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council.

The statement, carried by the Saudi Press Agency, called the plot described by the American attorney general “outrageous and heinous.” It urged other Arab and Muslim countries and “the international community” to “assume their responsibilities relating to these terrorist acts and the attempts to threaten the stability of countries as well as international peace and security.”

In London, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States, said that Iran should take the accusations seriously and prosecute the Iranians who concocted the plot.

“Whoever is responsible for this in the Iranian government will hopefully be brought to justice by Iranian authorities, no matter how high the level of that person is,” said the prince, now the chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, in remarks at an energy industry conference.

At the United Nations on Wednesday, Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador, began holding individual briefings for Security Council members on details of the suspected plot. She was joined by a team of experts from the Justice Department and other branches of the American government, according to Mark Kornblau, the spokesman for the United States mission.

“We want to make sure that all members of the Security Council will have full information on what was a serious plot to assassinate an ambassador on U.S. soil,” Mr. Kornblau said.

There was no immediate plan by the United States to ask the council to do anything, Security Council diplomats said. Although the council sometimes pronounces on terrorist attacks, issuing a statement on an individual suspected plot would be unusual.

Even allies of the United States, while noting that they had no reason to doubt the allegations, said they were eager to ask questions about further evidence. But the general attitude seemed to be to wait to hear what Ms. Rice had to say.

“It looks rather bizarre, but I am not an expert,” said Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations.

The Iranian envoy, Mohammad Khazaee, sent a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon denying the allegations and complaining about what he called the disruptive role of the United States — a common response from Tehran.

“The Iranian nation seeks a world free from terrorism and considers the current U.S. warmongering and propaganda machine against Iran as a threat not just against itself but to the peace and stability in the Persian Gulf region,” the letter said, adding that Iran “underlines its determination to maintain its friendly relations with all regional countries, particularly with its Muslim neighbors.”

As part of the United States response to the suspected plot, the Treasury Department declared on Wednesday that the Iranian airline Mahan Air had provided “financial, material and technological support” to the Quds Force as well as Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia in South Lebanon. The Treasury finding bars American citizens from having any commercial and financial transactions with the company, and freezes any assets it may have in the United States.

A statement on the Treasury Department’s Web site said that Mahan Air had secretly ferried Quds operatives “to and from Iran and Syria for military training,” and had transported “personnel, weapons and goods” on behalf of Hezbollah.

It quoted David S. Cohen, an under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, as saying: “Following the revelation about the IRGC-QF’s use of the international financial system to fund its murder-for-hire plot, today’s action highlights further the undeniable risks of doing business with Iran.”"