Terrorism Close Calls (2018) s01e04 Episode Script
Operation Chevrolet: The Plot to Kill Saudi Ambassador
It's an Iran-sanctioned plot to attack on American soil.
It was absolutely clear that this operation had been ordered by, and approved at, the highest levels of the Iranian government.
They want to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
If they were able to pull this off, they could look at the Saudis and say, "We can find you, and we will get you anywhere in the world.
" They chose an unlikely candidate for the job.
Arbabsiar doesn't seem like the sort of person that you would choose, uh as an operative in a big terrorist plot, but that doesn't mean he could not still have been deadly.
Arbabsiar becomes the focus of an international murder-for-hire scheme involving an elite Iranian military unit and a Mexican drug cartel.
The Iranians were openly looking for a Mexican drug trafficking organization, in conducting a series of terrorist attacks in the United States.
Well, it would've been catastrophic.
Not only would it have resulted in mass casualties, but you could have provoked a war.
The plot reinforces the regime as being America's most deadly adversary We're talking about a level of sophistication in terms of explosives and weaponry that people had not seen.
and underscores the importance of the counterterrorist mission.
The U.
S.
Special Operations Command are like hockey goalies, blocking the terrorist attacks that are coming flying at the American people every day at 100 miles an hour.
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo-Nazis.
This is cuts across ideological lines and it cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
People's lives depend on their success.
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls: the FBI must stop an attempted assassination against a foreign diplomat in Washington, D.
C.
The deadly plot reveals a bizarre connection between a car salesman in Dallas, a Mexican drug cartel, and the Quds Force.
From the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup d'état of Prime Minister Mosaddegh, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, to the nuclear agreement President Trump described as "disastrous" in 2017, Iran and America have seen decades of distrust, bloodshed and animosity.
Today, many in the counterterrorism community point to Iran as the largest threat to American interests at home and abroad.
Former FBI Assistant Director, Steve Pomerantz spent 27 years at the Bureau and is an expert on terrorism.
Among countries, and we use the term "state sponsors of terrorism," those countries that utilize terrorism as part and parcel of their, if you will, diplomatic relations abroad, Iran is by far the most lethal and dangerous and active.
Over the years, Iran has even extended their reach to attacks in the United States.
In the wake of the Iran hostage crisis, and as 52 Americans are held in Tehran, Iran brazenly targets Ali Akbar Tabatabaei, a former Iranian press attaché and an outspoken opponent of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
He is assassinated in Washington, D.
C.
They recruited a local convert of Islam to dress as a postman and go to this individual's house in Bethesda and sign for a package, and gun him down right in front of his family.
Former CIA Case Officer Kevin Carroll is an expert on Iran.
They They're an extremely repressive regime, and they act abroad as they act at home.
They use murder to try to control their population.
They've assassinated people in Britain, in France, in Switzerland, in Austria, and conducted other terrorist attacks in the West as well.
Along with attacks against the West, Iran has also targeted other Persian Gulf governments with violence.
The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia is rooted in religion, the split between the Sunnis and the Shias.
There is conflict, now aided and abetted in modern times with political differences, and particularly the political desire of Iran under the current regime to be dominant in that part of the world.
An opportunity for Iran to assert this dominance over the Saudis is revealed through an unexpected source.
A DEA agent receives a call from an informant inside one of the most dangerous criminal syndicates in Mexico: the Los Zetas Cartel.
The informant reports being solicited for an unusual hit.
Dealing with informants who work internationally, of course, is a lot different than dealing with them here at home.
When you're talking about Mexico and cartels and DEA involvement, that's a very special relationship.
It's a close relationship, um, and it's got its own rules and its own dynamic.
The informant tells of a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States.
The plot is being organized by an Iranian-American car salesman named Mansour Arbabsiar.
The DEA agent reports the information to the local FBI office in Houston, and the FBI office in Houston then takes the case.
FBI Special Agent Wood is dedicated to countering threats emanating from Iran and its clandestine proxies across the globe.
I think that the FBI Houston office's reaction to learning about this plot was probably very similar to the one that we had in New York, which was, you know, incredulity.
It seemingly doesn't seem like something that a sophisticated country like Iran, who has, you know, a pretty impressive military and obviously has a lot of capability, uh to be leveraging a used car salesman from Texas to assassinate a foreign diplomat.
Although the plan sounds far-fetched, the FBI open an investigation into Mansour Arbabsiar, a 56 year-old Iranian-American citizen living in Corpus Christi, Texas.
The things that I began to learn about Arbabsiar were He was not your atypical person that was conducting, you know, acts of terror.
Uh He was a person who grew up in the United States.
Um He had womanized.
Uh He was not a very pious person.
He just was an exceptionally underwhelming, uh not interesting, uh kind of slimy type of person.
In the following months, there are several recorded meetings and phone calls between Arbabsiar and the informant.
And what Arbabsiar was looking for, as he had kind of indicated to the source, was that The people that he was working for back in the Iranian government were big, important people.
The source ended up learning from Arbabsiar that ultimately, he was looking for somebody to target, assassinate, kill, capture, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States.
The FBI decide to find out if Arbabsiar really has the capability, support, and means to make an actual attack happen.
Under the direction of the FBI, the informant agrees to work with Arbabsiar and the Iranians, under one condition The sources posing as hit men insisted on a $100,000 down payment, um as part of a 1.
5 million dollar payment for just the initial part of the operation, assassinating the ambassador.
The DEA source at the time, who was, you know, playing the part of being this Mexican drug cartel member, um had, you know, told him that in order for him to move any further, uh like, for instance, surveilling the ambassador in Washington, D.
C.
, that, you know, there was gonna be expenses that were gonna be accrued as a result of, you know, these these movements.
Um And also, aside from the fact that, you know He wouldn't be floating the operation on his own, um it also communicated to him that they were for real, that Arbabsiar did was, in fact, working for the people that he was saying that he was working for, um and that they were interested in actually doing the plot.
Arbabsiar agrees to make the down payment of $100,000 demanded by the informant, indicating real support backing the plot.
The stakes went up for the investigation when money actually started changing hands.
A ssistant U.
S.
Attorney Glen Kopp is a federal prosecutor assigned to the case.
There were two wires that were sent to an undercover bank account in the United States.
About 50 thou I mean, it was $50,000 each.
The way that federal wires work, is that they actually have to pass through banks in New York before they get routed to their final destination.
For us, as Manhattan-based prosecutors, that gave us a venue hook.
A total of $100,000 has been deposited into the FBI undercover bank account.
People say a lot of things.
Um You have to start picking up overt acts, and in the case with Arbabsiar, the first overt act is when he begins to transfer money.
Um And I think that that's when, you know, this went from being, you know, a very interesting story to somebody is somebody is actually going to try and assassinate this ambassador.
It clearly signaled to us, was likely the Iranian government backing this plot, and not just the Iranian government, but the Quds Force, who, historically, had been involved in overseas operations in, uh connection with attacks.
So, raising the stakes was sort of an understatement.
I mean, this was a serious engagement by the Iranians.
Designated a terrorist entity by the United States in 2007, the Quds Force is a branch of the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and one of the most powerful security agencies in the Middle East, known to conduct covert operations abroad, including terrorist attacks and kidnappings.
The way that the Iranians kind of break up their military is they have a conscript service, and they have the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Uh And, you know, these are kind of like the more in-line thinkers.
They're not just being serving some type of, like, mandatory conscription in the military.
They're signing up.
They're volunteering.
They're there because they identify with the ideology.
They identify with the regime.
And the Quds Force selects from that body of people to go and carry out their external operations outside of the country, their clandestine ops for targeted assassinations, killings Um, you know You name it.
That's the pool of people that they go to.
Of this select pool of Quds Force members is a direct link to Arbabsiar.
He had talked about his cousin.
Uh His cousin, he had said, was a member of the military, but he said the military there has, you know, many forms.
He was a part of the military that was, you know, kind of clandestine, it did things overseas.
The agents find out that Arbabsiar's cousin is Abdul Reza Shahlai.
Arbabsiar's cousin was someone who was, at least, understood to be a high level member of the Quds Force, and someone who had, historically, been involved in attacks on U.
S.
coalition forces during the Iraq War, whose operations led to casualties of American soldiers.
And so, he was a significant player.
It helped us understand that this is something that, you know, could potentially have been very, very, very dangerous because it involved that individual, but at the same time, also kind of went to us understanding, I think, more about him and the fact that he has such that he has the level of influence with his country to be able to, you know, push a plot like this forward, which I think, from an outside observer, sounds like a very, very half-witted idea.
The connection to this high-ranking cousin helps investigators understand the unlikely choice of Arbabsiar as the go-between for such a dangerous and high-stakes plot.
I worked the Iranian program for a pretty significant period of time for the FBI.
And one of the things that I kind of came up on very frequently is that there seems to be a lot of nepotism within the structure, the government structure, the military structure of Iran.
And, you know, we've basically put together that the nepotism is based on trust.
So, family connection is is a way for them to vet, you know, that "This is a person we can trust.
" That's a portion of how they operate.
Once Arbabsiar delivers the initial payment, his focus turns to the details of the assassination.
Between the source's communications and Arbabsiar, it's also kind of fleshed out to what lengths they were willing to go to assassinate this person, um because the source had brought up with Arbabsiar in their meetings, "This isn't a person you can just shoot.
He's gonna have a security detail.
This isn't somebody we can just mug on the side of the road.
" Um And so, the idea came that, "No, we want you to use a bomb.
" And obviously, that mitigates any risk of being overcome by a security detail.
The plan was going to be that associates, or alleged associates of the source, these members of a Mexican drug cartel, were going to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.
C.
, and they had provided Arbabsiar with information that the Saudi ambassador had a sort of regular breakfast spot at a restaurant in D.
C.
, and that that was where the assassination attempt would be conducted, and that the most the surest way to assassinate him would be to blow up the restaurant.
The informant tells Arbabsiar that he's sent one of his workers to Washington, D.
C.
to surveil both the ambassador and the intended location for the attack, a popular restaurant called Café Milano.
Café Milano is only about six blocks from Georgetown University.
It's right off Wisconsin Avenue, on Prospect Street here in D.
C.
There's tremendous foot traffic of young college students going by it all the time.
When the source was going back and forth with Arbabsiar on the location for where they would decide to bomb the Saudi ambassador, um it became very clear that Arbabsiar, nor the people that were telling him to go forward with the plot, were concerned whatsoever about the casualties to the public and to other people in the D.
C.
area.
Cafe Milano is as a hotspot for many of D.
C.
's elite.
The clientele at Café Milano includes former presidents.
It includes large substantial portions of the diplomatic core, all sorts of bold-faced names, as well as any person that happens to work there or just be walking by.
So, it would have killed a cross-section of Americans.
Arbabsiar's response to the representations that there would be large scale casualties as a result of the assassination attempt was rather casual.
It was not a concern to him, and it was not a concern, as he expressed, to the folks in Iran, who were managing this, um this matter, this operation.
After that conversation, Arbabsiar called back to Shakuri, his Quds Force handler in Iran, and informed Shakuri that as many as 150 American civilians would be killed, and similarly Shakuri told him to hurry the job along.
"Get it done now.
" With Gholam Shakuri's blessing, Arbabsiar decides to target the ambassador at Café Milano by using C4 explosives to blow it up.
Based on my professional experience, the amount of explosives that they were bringing to the table would've brought down an apartment building.
The consequences of the attack, if it had been successful, would have been massive and varied.
Um For one thing, it would have put the United States in violation of the Vienna Convention, which requires us to protect diplomats that are on our properties.
The Saudis would have had a very legitimate complaint against us and it would have been the biggest terror attack in this country since 9/11.
During the meetings between the informant, Arbabsiar discloses more targets in the U.
S.
authorized by his handlers in Iran.
The Iranians were openly looking for the assistance of Los Zetas, a Mexican drug trafficking organization, in conducting a series of terrorist attacks in the United States.
The Café Milano plot was only the first part of a planned three-part operation.
The Iranians planned first to assassinate Ambassador al-Jubeir at Café Milano in Georgetown, and then they wished to attack the Saudi Embassy in the United States, and the Israeli Embassy in the United States as well.
With money on the table, more targets identified, and a serious assassination plot in the end stage, FBI agents and the federal prosecutor build the case for trial.
A plot this sensitive, information this explosive, gets handled at the very top levels of the United States government, and policy makers are being informed about it in real time.
Congress, where I was serving as a staffer at the time, is informed about it a very short period of time afterwards.
Also, in this case, the federal courts had to be involved.
So, information has to be handled in very particular ways, uh first of all, to protect the citizens of the United States from the violent crime that was being planned, and second, to ensure that the FBI and the Department of Justice could get a conviction in the matter.
Getting a conviction isn't the only issue.
The agents have another major problem: Arbabsiar is no longer in the United States.
At that point, Arbabsiar was in, um Iran.
So, the plan was "Can we get Arbabsiar to the United States? And who else can we get, not only indicted, but is there anybody else we could get to the United States and arrest?" Um So, because we knew from what Arbabsiar was telling us, that he was not a lone wolf.
Um We knew from what Arbabsiar was telling us that the money that he had directed to the source as a down payment for the assassination was not his money, but it came from his Iranian handlers, who are members of the Quds Force IRGC.
So, the idea was, "Can we identify those folks? And can we make it clear to the world who's behind this plot?" The New York field office counterterrorism unit ends up getting pulled in, and at this point, we all began plotting out possibilities, trying to determine when he's gonna be returning back from Iran.
Since only a portion of the money has been paid for the hit, the FBI decides to give Arbabsiar an ultimatum.
The agents had, I thought, a brilliant idea that really comes from the narcotics trafficking playbook, which is human collateral.
A recipient of a large drug transmission, before the money is sent, might send over a family member to sit with suppliers, who will stay there until the money is paid, to guarantee payment.
So, the agents came up with the idea of telling Arbabsiar that the operation would not go forward unless either half of the $1.
5 million was gonna be paid, or Arbabsiar himself would come to Mexico, and stay with the cartel.
Once the operation was done, and the money was paid, Arbabsiar would be free.
Arbabsiar's Iranian handlers refuse to give him any more money until the job is done.
Arbabsiar had indicated that politics back in Iran were, you know, making it difficult on funding the operation.
And so, we had directed the source to tell him, like, "Well, if you travel into the country, that will suffice as proof of payment, because we will know that you'll be here for the operation.
" And Arbabsiar ultimately agreed to be that human collateral.
So, yeah, it was a gamble.
Arbabsiar agrees to travel to Mexico to be held as human collateral with the people he believes to be members of the Mexican cartel, and guarantee a final payment for the ambassador's assassination.
But in order to convict and prosecute Arbabsiar, they still need to bring him back to the United States.
So, at that time, it was really about game planning for what's gonna happen, how we're gonna get Arbabsiar here.
And what I mean by that, is he was not going to be flying to the United States.
The idea was that he'd be going to Mexico, and our confidence that we could get him going from Iran to Mexico and then somehow end up in New York.
So, what happened when Arbabsiar arrived in Mexico was that the Mexican authorities had a problem with his passport, and he ultimately His I think, before he was in Mexico, his immediate location of disembarkation was Germany.
So, the Mexican rule, I believe, at that point, was, "We send you back to Germany first.
" The United States arranged with Mexico for Arbabsiar to be denied admission into Mexico.
He was put on the quote, unquote "next flight home," which just happened to be stopping at John F.
Kennedy International Airport in Queens.
He boards a flight.
Unknowing to him, he's surveilled by government agents.
So, the FBI had placed people on the plane, in the event that Arbabsiar had gotten wise to the fact that he was being flown to New York because the U.
S.
government was aware of his of his intentions.
Um And they were there for the safety and the security of the people on the aircraft.
If I was Arbabsiar at that point, I would've been thinking that, "The gig's up.
Somebody Somebody somewhere knows what I'm up to.
" As Arbabsiar's plane touches down at Kennedy International Airport in New York, Agent Woods and a team of FBI agents are waiting.
So, what happened when Arbabsiar arrived at JFK was, uh The captain came off the plane, handed me his passport, um and then I waited for Arbabsiar to come off the aircraft, and greeted him and said, "Hello, Mr.
Arbabsiar.
" I identified myself, not as being an FBI agent, um and said, "I understand that you had a problem with your passport in Mexico.
" And he said, "Yes, I did.
They wouldn't let me into the country.
" And I said, "Okay, that's Sorry to hear that.
Will you follow me? We're gonna go fix this right now.
" And he walked with me to a back room at JFK Airport, where he was taken into custody.
Arbabsiar really didn't let on that he that he thought that he was in trouble at that point.
When we got back to the to the room, uh two SWAT agents took Arbabsiar into custody and began to search him.
When Arbabsiar was arrested at Kennedy Airport, he was immediately given his Miranda Rights by the FBI, but chose to cooperate with the FBI and began talking without a lawyer.
Mr.
Arbabsiar was moved to a motorcade, and we took him to an offsite location off the airport, um where he remained and waived his rights to presentment every, I believe, six hours.
The goal now is to gain Arbabsiar's confidence, get him talking freely, and hopefully turn him into an informant.
Getting a confession from Arbabsiar was going to be, um great, but we had so much evidence.
We had recordings, we had the money.
You didn't really need him to confess at that point.
Um The most important objective with the arrest was turning him into an intelligence source Getting him to talk about his Iranian co-conspirators, getting him to identify them and what their objectives were.
And if he was going to be game for that, the next objective, the next step, would be to get him, or turn him, and use him as a source.
First and foremost, the tools that the agents used was just building rapport with him.
Um We had an agent who spoke Farsi, um who I believe took the lead in talking with Arbabsiar.
And Arbabsiar was a big personality.
He was a used car salesman.
He liked to talk.
So, after, I think, the initial stage of the, um the debriefs, and the interrogation, really establishing that there was no immediate threat to the United States.
I think the agents expected that this If this was gonna work, it was not gonna be quick, and there was gonna be, potentially, days of debriefs.
So, it was really rapport building, and getting him comfortable with them.
Over the next few days, Arbabsiar begins to explain his involvement in the plot, the connection with the drug cartel, and why he returned to Iran.
He went to visit with his mother, um, his cousin, who this guy, Abdul Reza Shahlai, um He He was there as well.
Arbabsiar had kind of, come across as being, I guess, important.
Uh He decided to throw out this story about, um "A friend of mine, he wanted to get his sister into the country, and so, you know, I made a phone call to a person that I know in Mexico, and we were able to make that happen.
" His cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai and Gholam Shakuri, the man who'd become his handler in Iran, had been impressed with Arbabsiar's supposed connections to the Mexican cartel.
Arbabsiar had expressed to him that he knew of folks in the drug trade down in south Texas, because there's a lot of transportation of narcotics going across the border and money coming back, and it was suggested to him by his cousin that, perhaps, those would be folks who'd be interested, um or willing to put a hit, or take a take a job like that.
Basically, their conversations during that time were Shahlai and Shakuri were both feeling him out to see if they could recruit him to work for the government of Iran during his time in the United States.
Arbabsiar told us that he was kind of confused at first, 'cause he thought he was gonna get a gun and a badge, um which wasn't the case, and they clarified, that's not the case.
Um And So, that's when he essentially signed up with his cousin and with this individual Gholam Shakuri.
Arbabsiar also explains why al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian ambassador, had been targeted by the Iranians in the first place.
And one of the things that precipitated the 2011 plot was that Gholam Shakuri, who had been in charge of the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, he'd previously been supporting Shiite militias in Bahrain.
And when the Saudis decided to help Bahrain crack down on the Shiite militias there, they The Iranians decided to retaliate by attempting to assassinate, by plotting to assassinate, Ambassador al-Jubeir here in Washington, D.
C.
When Arbabsiar had returned to Texas after meeting his cousin in Iran, and a female friend introduced him to her nephew, who she believed was a member of the Los Zetas Mexican cartel, only, her nephew turned out to be a DEA informant.
There's definitely nothing normal about this case, and about the approach that Arbabsiar made to the source.
I don't know that the hitman market is particularly an open market.
His going theory is that narcotics traffickers, Mexican cartels, are known for their violence.
That those would be the kind of people who'd not only be willing to do a hit for a significant amount of money, but would also be the kind of folks who would have access to the kind of equipment that you would need to execute a hit like that.
During the questioning of Arbabsiar, the FBI and federal prosecutor zone in on a few different objectives.
The agents play back some of Arbabsiar's conversations recorded by the informant.
It was making Part of what was going on was making it clear to him that, you know, this was not a case he could win, and that there was a lot of knowledge that the agents already had, and perhaps the best option for him to, uh minimize his ultimate exposure to a long, long prison sentence, would be to help us, to help the United States to build the case against his Iranian handlers.
Realizing that he is now fully implicated in a terrorist plot against the United States, Arbabsiar attempts to strike up a deal with the FBI.
The FBI, wisely, asked Arbabsiar to call Shakuri, his cousin, the Quds Force officer, back in Iran, and outline the details of the plot as they stood, and get, yet again, an order from Shakuri to go ahead and conduct this attack that would have killed hundreds of Americans.
It was a very clever piece of interviewing technique and investigative technique by the FBI.
They deserve great credit for it.
Arbabsiar may have thought that he was going to be offered some leniency.
He made a number of phone calls back to Iran that were recorded.
Uh He spoke with his handler, Gholam Shakuri.
I'm Effectively, I'm paraphrasing here: "I'm in New York.
" Um Shakuri said, you know, "Okay, glad to hear it.
You're safe.
" And he's, like, "I am.
" And, you know Then Shakuri said, you know, "You need to go forward with the operation.
Buy the Chevrolet.
" I'm in New York.
- Glad to hear it.
You're safe.
- I am.
You need to go forward with the operation.
Buy the Chevrolet.
Just do it quickly.
It's late.
Just buy it for me and bring it already.
Chevrolet was the code word for the operation to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador.
And that allowed us to have, not just Arbabsiar's word on the recordings that he worked with others, um, in Iran, but we actually had their word that they were working with Arbabsiar to assassinate the Saudi ambassador.
And, at some point, he pulled the trigger.
He said, "Enough is enough.
I want my lawyer.
I want to stop helping you.
" During the 12 days of interviews, Arbabsiar discloses information authorities describe as extremely valuable intelligence.
So, in trying to understand the outrageousness of the plot, and why the Iranians would risk so much to kill one person, is that, the Saudis and the Iranians had a longstanding feud, and so, if they were able to pull this off, um they could look at the Saudis and say, "We can find you, and we will get you anywhere in the world.
The most safe place you might think, whether in your home, or in the United States, in Washington, D.
C.
, of all places, where you might be letting your guard down, we will find you, and we will kill you.
" So, there was a big upside for them, if that was had it gone off that way.
But, the downside could have been a world war.
The idea that they were gonna kill a number of people, potentially hundreds of people on U.
S.
soil, just to kill one ambassador, or just to be able to make a point with the Saudis, is hard to believe, but, this is a gamble that they were willing to take at the time.
The deadly Iranian gamble didn't pay off, thanks to the hard work and bravery of those working the Iranian Threat Network.
For me, I think the biggest thing that I took away from this case was the incredible operability between all the different nodes of the government that came together to work to further uncover the plot and, you know, assist in it being rendered to justice.
You know, the DEA did a phenomenal job in obviously having a source that was, you know, that was obviously well-placed, um and receiving the information and then reporting the information to the FBI.
Everybody was selfless and everybody was an altruist in trying to do just the 100% right thing to do, which was to stop the Iranian government from trying to murder this ambassador, and effectively, anybody else that would be hurt in the process.
The agents are the ones who put their lives on the lines every day, and you get to sit in the office, and be safe and comfortable.
But, ultimately, they pass the ball to you to finish it off.
Um And given how much work, and how much danger the agents put themselves in, you really don't want to mess that up.
Um So, there's a tremendous amount of pressure to get it done right, and have justice be done, and you want that person to be punished.
And you want the message to get out that these acts will be prosecuted and prosecuted severely.
Although Iran denies all knowledge of the plot, Mansour Arbabsiar pleads guilty and is sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiring with Iranian military officials to assassinate a foreign dignitary.
Um Use of interstate commerce in a in an assassination for hire, as well as conspiracies to engage in this conduct, um interstate, uh terrorist act.
Gholam Shakuri is indicted as co-conspirator in the plot, but there are still many loose ends.
Shakuri, the Quds Force case officer who was involved in killing Americans in the past, and plotted to kill more Americans here, is still at large.
Shakuri is undoubtedly out there and plotting and planning to kill Americans today.
Many are frustrated by what they believe have been the inactions of the United States.
The Iranians paid no price whatsoever for their plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.
C.
They had plausible deniability by going to the Los Zetas, or a person they thought was the Los Zetas, to carry it out, but the rest of their trade craft in the operation was so sloppy that they didn't care if the United States knew.
And that shows the lack of fear and respect that Tehran has for Washington.
I was very surprised at the direction that we took after the Saudi ambassador plot had been exposed.
Um I thought that it rose to a level that, you know, there could actually be some type of military response on the part of the United States.
In terms of the consequences to Iran as a result of this plot, you know, you can look at this in the long history of all this terrorism that Iran keeps doing it over and over and over again.
And frankly, it's not by no means the most serious terrorist attack they've ever been responsible for.
They have been responsible for, for example, the deaths of many, many U.
S.
service people in Iraq because of the weapons and training that they supply there.
And they've been doing this for years and years, and one could argue, just continually getting away with it.
You had the Iranian government backing an assassination on U.
S.
soil that could've resulted in the deaths of many, many, many people.
So, to say that we got lucky, and we foiled it, and therefore, nothing was going to be done, was surprising.
I don't think that people realize that we're not dealing with people that randomly radicalize and subscribe to an ideology and become hobbyist terrorists and build hobby bombs.
We're talking about a government's ability to network and get their hands on military technology and excrete those things underneath our radar.
We're talking about a level of sophistication in terms of explosives and weaponry that people had not seen, that only militaries have seen.
And it would've been something very similar to a war zone.
The plot also highlights the potential for terrorist networks to align themselves with Mexican drug cartels.
Hezbollah, which is a terrorist proxy of Iran, is very significantly involved in the drug trade.
They don't like to admit that, but that's a fact.
As to links between Hezbollah, thus the Iranians, and the Mexican cartels, it stands to reason that the first time that the Iranians approached the Mexican cartels would not have been to ask them to do something as dramatic as assassinate a Saudi ambassador in Washington D.
C.
After the 2011 plot to kill the ambassador, the U.
S.
State Department reports a marked resurgence of Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism.
The IRGC's Quds Force is suspected of directing terror attacks in Georgia, India, Thailand and Kenya in 2012.
More recently, Iran has been, of course, extremely active in the Syrian Civil war, and inside Iraq.
Militarily, Iran is moving from success to success.
So, my view of Iran and the threat network that it represents is that it's the most malignant threat to the United States by way of terrorism, and the fact that they are smart and stay beneath the radar and that they aren't trying to put scores up on the board, so to speak, by driving vans into people in random acts of violence, the fact that they lay beneath the surface to do incredibly insidious things, and are capable of it, and could do many of them at once around the world, places them in a category all unto their own.
I testified before Congress in 1986, and I said then, in 1986, that the single greatest threat to American security from international terrorism were those organizations sponsored by Iran.
That's a long time ago, and I'm certain that if you gave testimony today, the answer would be roughly the same.
The Iranians have killed probably about a thousand Americans since 1983, blowing up embassies, Marine barracks, hijacking aircraft, and killing our soldiers in Iraq.
It's not an accident that more plots have not succeeded in the United States since 9/11.
People grow complacent because of the success that our intelligence, and law enforcement, and special operations communities have had in using the new surveillance and legal authorities that have been given to them.
But the threat is just as severe as it was on September 10th.
The Iranian people and their culture is very different than the regime.
And I think for many Iranians, they're, you know, trying to find a way to navigate between living their lives the way that they want to live them and doing it underneath an oppressive government.
This is not a war that you win on defense.
Politicians will stand up and start talking about more fences, more more physical barriers.
Yes, that's necessary, but that's the last line of defense.
You want to beat them long before that.
Counterterrorism is hard work, but the people involved in it do it because they understand its significance, and the fact that people's lives depend on their success.
To those who have devoted their lives to the cause, the fight is personal.
I can paint it for you.
The difficulty is, I've seen these things first hand, and it kind of It goes to my experiences.
I lost three.
Actually, I lost my closest friend today in 2005, with two other guys.
Um Fuck, I'm not gonna cry on camera.
No, that's okay.
Um So, like, it's When I go to describing what this shit looks like, it's because I've You know I tried to find his fucking head for half of a day, and the asshole who killed him had it, and then we found him six months later, and he didn't live.
But, like The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people here in the United States.
It was absolutely clear that this operation had been ordered by, and approved at, the highest levels of the Iranian government.
They want to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
If they were able to pull this off, they could look at the Saudis and say, "We can find you, and we will get you anywhere in the world.
" They chose an unlikely candidate for the job.
Arbabsiar doesn't seem like the sort of person that you would choose, uh as an operative in a big terrorist plot, but that doesn't mean he could not still have been deadly.
Arbabsiar becomes the focus of an international murder-for-hire scheme involving an elite Iranian military unit and a Mexican drug cartel.
The Iranians were openly looking for a Mexican drug trafficking organization, in conducting a series of terrorist attacks in the United States.
Well, it would've been catastrophic.
Not only would it have resulted in mass casualties, but you could have provoked a war.
The plot reinforces the regime as being America's most deadly adversary We're talking about a level of sophistication in terms of explosives and weaponry that people had not seen.
and underscores the importance of the counterterrorist mission.
The U.
S.
Special Operations Command are like hockey goalies, blocking the terrorist attacks that are coming flying at the American people every day at 100 miles an hour.
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo-Nazis.
This is cuts across ideological lines and it cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
People's lives depend on their success.
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls: the FBI must stop an attempted assassination against a foreign diplomat in Washington, D.
C.
The deadly plot reveals a bizarre connection between a car salesman in Dallas, a Mexican drug cartel, and the Quds Force.
From the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup d'état of Prime Minister Mosaddegh, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, to the nuclear agreement President Trump described as "disastrous" in 2017, Iran and America have seen decades of distrust, bloodshed and animosity.
Today, many in the counterterrorism community point to Iran as the largest threat to American interests at home and abroad.
Former FBI Assistant Director, Steve Pomerantz spent 27 years at the Bureau and is an expert on terrorism.
Among countries, and we use the term "state sponsors of terrorism," those countries that utilize terrorism as part and parcel of their, if you will, diplomatic relations abroad, Iran is by far the most lethal and dangerous and active.
Over the years, Iran has even extended their reach to attacks in the United States.
In the wake of the Iran hostage crisis, and as 52 Americans are held in Tehran, Iran brazenly targets Ali Akbar Tabatabaei, a former Iranian press attaché and an outspoken opponent of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
He is assassinated in Washington, D.
C.
They recruited a local convert of Islam to dress as a postman and go to this individual's house in Bethesda and sign for a package, and gun him down right in front of his family.
Former CIA Case Officer Kevin Carroll is an expert on Iran.
They They're an extremely repressive regime, and they act abroad as they act at home.
They use murder to try to control their population.
They've assassinated people in Britain, in France, in Switzerland, in Austria, and conducted other terrorist attacks in the West as well.
Along with attacks against the West, Iran has also targeted other Persian Gulf governments with violence.
The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia is rooted in religion, the split between the Sunnis and the Shias.
There is conflict, now aided and abetted in modern times with political differences, and particularly the political desire of Iran under the current regime to be dominant in that part of the world.
An opportunity for Iran to assert this dominance over the Saudis is revealed through an unexpected source.
A DEA agent receives a call from an informant inside one of the most dangerous criminal syndicates in Mexico: the Los Zetas Cartel.
The informant reports being solicited for an unusual hit.
Dealing with informants who work internationally, of course, is a lot different than dealing with them here at home.
When you're talking about Mexico and cartels and DEA involvement, that's a very special relationship.
It's a close relationship, um, and it's got its own rules and its own dynamic.
The informant tells of a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States.
The plot is being organized by an Iranian-American car salesman named Mansour Arbabsiar.
The DEA agent reports the information to the local FBI office in Houston, and the FBI office in Houston then takes the case.
FBI Special Agent Wood is dedicated to countering threats emanating from Iran and its clandestine proxies across the globe.
I think that the FBI Houston office's reaction to learning about this plot was probably very similar to the one that we had in New York, which was, you know, incredulity.
It seemingly doesn't seem like something that a sophisticated country like Iran, who has, you know, a pretty impressive military and obviously has a lot of capability, uh to be leveraging a used car salesman from Texas to assassinate a foreign diplomat.
Although the plan sounds far-fetched, the FBI open an investigation into Mansour Arbabsiar, a 56 year-old Iranian-American citizen living in Corpus Christi, Texas.
The things that I began to learn about Arbabsiar were He was not your atypical person that was conducting, you know, acts of terror.
Uh He was a person who grew up in the United States.
Um He had womanized.
Uh He was not a very pious person.
He just was an exceptionally underwhelming, uh not interesting, uh kind of slimy type of person.
In the following months, there are several recorded meetings and phone calls between Arbabsiar and the informant.
And what Arbabsiar was looking for, as he had kind of indicated to the source, was that The people that he was working for back in the Iranian government were big, important people.
The source ended up learning from Arbabsiar that ultimately, he was looking for somebody to target, assassinate, kill, capture, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States.
The FBI decide to find out if Arbabsiar really has the capability, support, and means to make an actual attack happen.
Under the direction of the FBI, the informant agrees to work with Arbabsiar and the Iranians, under one condition The sources posing as hit men insisted on a $100,000 down payment, um as part of a 1.
5 million dollar payment for just the initial part of the operation, assassinating the ambassador.
The DEA source at the time, who was, you know, playing the part of being this Mexican drug cartel member, um had, you know, told him that in order for him to move any further, uh like, for instance, surveilling the ambassador in Washington, D.
C.
, that, you know, there was gonna be expenses that were gonna be accrued as a result of, you know, these these movements.
Um And also, aside from the fact that, you know He wouldn't be floating the operation on his own, um it also communicated to him that they were for real, that Arbabsiar did was, in fact, working for the people that he was saying that he was working for, um and that they were interested in actually doing the plot.
Arbabsiar agrees to make the down payment of $100,000 demanded by the informant, indicating real support backing the plot.
The stakes went up for the investigation when money actually started changing hands.
A ssistant U.
S.
Attorney Glen Kopp is a federal prosecutor assigned to the case.
There were two wires that were sent to an undercover bank account in the United States.
About 50 thou I mean, it was $50,000 each.
The way that federal wires work, is that they actually have to pass through banks in New York before they get routed to their final destination.
For us, as Manhattan-based prosecutors, that gave us a venue hook.
A total of $100,000 has been deposited into the FBI undercover bank account.
People say a lot of things.
Um You have to start picking up overt acts, and in the case with Arbabsiar, the first overt act is when he begins to transfer money.
Um And I think that that's when, you know, this went from being, you know, a very interesting story to somebody is somebody is actually going to try and assassinate this ambassador.
It clearly signaled to us, was likely the Iranian government backing this plot, and not just the Iranian government, but the Quds Force, who, historically, had been involved in overseas operations in, uh connection with attacks.
So, raising the stakes was sort of an understatement.
I mean, this was a serious engagement by the Iranians.
Designated a terrorist entity by the United States in 2007, the Quds Force is a branch of the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and one of the most powerful security agencies in the Middle East, known to conduct covert operations abroad, including terrorist attacks and kidnappings.
The way that the Iranians kind of break up their military is they have a conscript service, and they have the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Uh And, you know, these are kind of like the more in-line thinkers.
They're not just being serving some type of, like, mandatory conscription in the military.
They're signing up.
They're volunteering.
They're there because they identify with the ideology.
They identify with the regime.
And the Quds Force selects from that body of people to go and carry out their external operations outside of the country, their clandestine ops for targeted assassinations, killings Um, you know You name it.
That's the pool of people that they go to.
Of this select pool of Quds Force members is a direct link to Arbabsiar.
He had talked about his cousin.
Uh His cousin, he had said, was a member of the military, but he said the military there has, you know, many forms.
He was a part of the military that was, you know, kind of clandestine, it did things overseas.
The agents find out that Arbabsiar's cousin is Abdul Reza Shahlai.
Arbabsiar's cousin was someone who was, at least, understood to be a high level member of the Quds Force, and someone who had, historically, been involved in attacks on U.
S.
coalition forces during the Iraq War, whose operations led to casualties of American soldiers.
And so, he was a significant player.
It helped us understand that this is something that, you know, could potentially have been very, very, very dangerous because it involved that individual, but at the same time, also kind of went to us understanding, I think, more about him and the fact that he has such that he has the level of influence with his country to be able to, you know, push a plot like this forward, which I think, from an outside observer, sounds like a very, very half-witted idea.
The connection to this high-ranking cousin helps investigators understand the unlikely choice of Arbabsiar as the go-between for such a dangerous and high-stakes plot.
I worked the Iranian program for a pretty significant period of time for the FBI.
And one of the things that I kind of came up on very frequently is that there seems to be a lot of nepotism within the structure, the government structure, the military structure of Iran.
And, you know, we've basically put together that the nepotism is based on trust.
So, family connection is is a way for them to vet, you know, that "This is a person we can trust.
" That's a portion of how they operate.
Once Arbabsiar delivers the initial payment, his focus turns to the details of the assassination.
Between the source's communications and Arbabsiar, it's also kind of fleshed out to what lengths they were willing to go to assassinate this person, um because the source had brought up with Arbabsiar in their meetings, "This isn't a person you can just shoot.
He's gonna have a security detail.
This isn't somebody we can just mug on the side of the road.
" Um And so, the idea came that, "No, we want you to use a bomb.
" And obviously, that mitigates any risk of being overcome by a security detail.
The plan was going to be that associates, or alleged associates of the source, these members of a Mexican drug cartel, were going to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.
C.
, and they had provided Arbabsiar with information that the Saudi ambassador had a sort of regular breakfast spot at a restaurant in D.
C.
, and that that was where the assassination attempt would be conducted, and that the most the surest way to assassinate him would be to blow up the restaurant.
The informant tells Arbabsiar that he's sent one of his workers to Washington, D.
C.
to surveil both the ambassador and the intended location for the attack, a popular restaurant called Café Milano.
Café Milano is only about six blocks from Georgetown University.
It's right off Wisconsin Avenue, on Prospect Street here in D.
C.
There's tremendous foot traffic of young college students going by it all the time.
When the source was going back and forth with Arbabsiar on the location for where they would decide to bomb the Saudi ambassador, um it became very clear that Arbabsiar, nor the people that were telling him to go forward with the plot, were concerned whatsoever about the casualties to the public and to other people in the D.
C.
area.
Cafe Milano is as a hotspot for many of D.
C.
's elite.
The clientele at Café Milano includes former presidents.
It includes large substantial portions of the diplomatic core, all sorts of bold-faced names, as well as any person that happens to work there or just be walking by.
So, it would have killed a cross-section of Americans.
Arbabsiar's response to the representations that there would be large scale casualties as a result of the assassination attempt was rather casual.
It was not a concern to him, and it was not a concern, as he expressed, to the folks in Iran, who were managing this, um this matter, this operation.
After that conversation, Arbabsiar called back to Shakuri, his Quds Force handler in Iran, and informed Shakuri that as many as 150 American civilians would be killed, and similarly Shakuri told him to hurry the job along.
"Get it done now.
" With Gholam Shakuri's blessing, Arbabsiar decides to target the ambassador at Café Milano by using C4 explosives to blow it up.
Based on my professional experience, the amount of explosives that they were bringing to the table would've brought down an apartment building.
The consequences of the attack, if it had been successful, would have been massive and varied.
Um For one thing, it would have put the United States in violation of the Vienna Convention, which requires us to protect diplomats that are on our properties.
The Saudis would have had a very legitimate complaint against us and it would have been the biggest terror attack in this country since 9/11.
During the meetings between the informant, Arbabsiar discloses more targets in the U.
S.
authorized by his handlers in Iran.
The Iranians were openly looking for the assistance of Los Zetas, a Mexican drug trafficking organization, in conducting a series of terrorist attacks in the United States.
The Café Milano plot was only the first part of a planned three-part operation.
The Iranians planned first to assassinate Ambassador al-Jubeir at Café Milano in Georgetown, and then they wished to attack the Saudi Embassy in the United States, and the Israeli Embassy in the United States as well.
With money on the table, more targets identified, and a serious assassination plot in the end stage, FBI agents and the federal prosecutor build the case for trial.
A plot this sensitive, information this explosive, gets handled at the very top levels of the United States government, and policy makers are being informed about it in real time.
Congress, where I was serving as a staffer at the time, is informed about it a very short period of time afterwards.
Also, in this case, the federal courts had to be involved.
So, information has to be handled in very particular ways, uh first of all, to protect the citizens of the United States from the violent crime that was being planned, and second, to ensure that the FBI and the Department of Justice could get a conviction in the matter.
Getting a conviction isn't the only issue.
The agents have another major problem: Arbabsiar is no longer in the United States.
At that point, Arbabsiar was in, um Iran.
So, the plan was "Can we get Arbabsiar to the United States? And who else can we get, not only indicted, but is there anybody else we could get to the United States and arrest?" Um So, because we knew from what Arbabsiar was telling us, that he was not a lone wolf.
Um We knew from what Arbabsiar was telling us that the money that he had directed to the source as a down payment for the assassination was not his money, but it came from his Iranian handlers, who are members of the Quds Force IRGC.
So, the idea was, "Can we identify those folks? And can we make it clear to the world who's behind this plot?" The New York field office counterterrorism unit ends up getting pulled in, and at this point, we all began plotting out possibilities, trying to determine when he's gonna be returning back from Iran.
Since only a portion of the money has been paid for the hit, the FBI decides to give Arbabsiar an ultimatum.
The agents had, I thought, a brilliant idea that really comes from the narcotics trafficking playbook, which is human collateral.
A recipient of a large drug transmission, before the money is sent, might send over a family member to sit with suppliers, who will stay there until the money is paid, to guarantee payment.
So, the agents came up with the idea of telling Arbabsiar that the operation would not go forward unless either half of the $1.
5 million was gonna be paid, or Arbabsiar himself would come to Mexico, and stay with the cartel.
Once the operation was done, and the money was paid, Arbabsiar would be free.
Arbabsiar's Iranian handlers refuse to give him any more money until the job is done.
Arbabsiar had indicated that politics back in Iran were, you know, making it difficult on funding the operation.
And so, we had directed the source to tell him, like, "Well, if you travel into the country, that will suffice as proof of payment, because we will know that you'll be here for the operation.
" And Arbabsiar ultimately agreed to be that human collateral.
So, yeah, it was a gamble.
Arbabsiar agrees to travel to Mexico to be held as human collateral with the people he believes to be members of the Mexican cartel, and guarantee a final payment for the ambassador's assassination.
But in order to convict and prosecute Arbabsiar, they still need to bring him back to the United States.
So, at that time, it was really about game planning for what's gonna happen, how we're gonna get Arbabsiar here.
And what I mean by that, is he was not going to be flying to the United States.
The idea was that he'd be going to Mexico, and our confidence that we could get him going from Iran to Mexico and then somehow end up in New York.
So, what happened when Arbabsiar arrived in Mexico was that the Mexican authorities had a problem with his passport, and he ultimately His I think, before he was in Mexico, his immediate location of disembarkation was Germany.
So, the Mexican rule, I believe, at that point, was, "We send you back to Germany first.
" The United States arranged with Mexico for Arbabsiar to be denied admission into Mexico.
He was put on the quote, unquote "next flight home," which just happened to be stopping at John F.
Kennedy International Airport in Queens.
He boards a flight.
Unknowing to him, he's surveilled by government agents.
So, the FBI had placed people on the plane, in the event that Arbabsiar had gotten wise to the fact that he was being flown to New York because the U.
S.
government was aware of his of his intentions.
Um And they were there for the safety and the security of the people on the aircraft.
If I was Arbabsiar at that point, I would've been thinking that, "The gig's up.
Somebody Somebody somewhere knows what I'm up to.
" As Arbabsiar's plane touches down at Kennedy International Airport in New York, Agent Woods and a team of FBI agents are waiting.
So, what happened when Arbabsiar arrived at JFK was, uh The captain came off the plane, handed me his passport, um and then I waited for Arbabsiar to come off the aircraft, and greeted him and said, "Hello, Mr.
Arbabsiar.
" I identified myself, not as being an FBI agent, um and said, "I understand that you had a problem with your passport in Mexico.
" And he said, "Yes, I did.
They wouldn't let me into the country.
" And I said, "Okay, that's Sorry to hear that.
Will you follow me? We're gonna go fix this right now.
" And he walked with me to a back room at JFK Airport, where he was taken into custody.
Arbabsiar really didn't let on that he that he thought that he was in trouble at that point.
When we got back to the to the room, uh two SWAT agents took Arbabsiar into custody and began to search him.
When Arbabsiar was arrested at Kennedy Airport, he was immediately given his Miranda Rights by the FBI, but chose to cooperate with the FBI and began talking without a lawyer.
Mr.
Arbabsiar was moved to a motorcade, and we took him to an offsite location off the airport, um where he remained and waived his rights to presentment every, I believe, six hours.
The goal now is to gain Arbabsiar's confidence, get him talking freely, and hopefully turn him into an informant.
Getting a confession from Arbabsiar was going to be, um great, but we had so much evidence.
We had recordings, we had the money.
You didn't really need him to confess at that point.
Um The most important objective with the arrest was turning him into an intelligence source Getting him to talk about his Iranian co-conspirators, getting him to identify them and what their objectives were.
And if he was going to be game for that, the next objective, the next step, would be to get him, or turn him, and use him as a source.
First and foremost, the tools that the agents used was just building rapport with him.
Um We had an agent who spoke Farsi, um who I believe took the lead in talking with Arbabsiar.
And Arbabsiar was a big personality.
He was a used car salesman.
He liked to talk.
So, after, I think, the initial stage of the, um the debriefs, and the interrogation, really establishing that there was no immediate threat to the United States.
I think the agents expected that this If this was gonna work, it was not gonna be quick, and there was gonna be, potentially, days of debriefs.
So, it was really rapport building, and getting him comfortable with them.
Over the next few days, Arbabsiar begins to explain his involvement in the plot, the connection with the drug cartel, and why he returned to Iran.
He went to visit with his mother, um, his cousin, who this guy, Abdul Reza Shahlai, um He He was there as well.
Arbabsiar had kind of, come across as being, I guess, important.
Uh He decided to throw out this story about, um "A friend of mine, he wanted to get his sister into the country, and so, you know, I made a phone call to a person that I know in Mexico, and we were able to make that happen.
" His cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai and Gholam Shakuri, the man who'd become his handler in Iran, had been impressed with Arbabsiar's supposed connections to the Mexican cartel.
Arbabsiar had expressed to him that he knew of folks in the drug trade down in south Texas, because there's a lot of transportation of narcotics going across the border and money coming back, and it was suggested to him by his cousin that, perhaps, those would be folks who'd be interested, um or willing to put a hit, or take a take a job like that.
Basically, their conversations during that time were Shahlai and Shakuri were both feeling him out to see if they could recruit him to work for the government of Iran during his time in the United States.
Arbabsiar told us that he was kind of confused at first, 'cause he thought he was gonna get a gun and a badge, um which wasn't the case, and they clarified, that's not the case.
Um And So, that's when he essentially signed up with his cousin and with this individual Gholam Shakuri.
Arbabsiar also explains why al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian ambassador, had been targeted by the Iranians in the first place.
And one of the things that precipitated the 2011 plot was that Gholam Shakuri, who had been in charge of the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, he'd previously been supporting Shiite militias in Bahrain.
And when the Saudis decided to help Bahrain crack down on the Shiite militias there, they The Iranians decided to retaliate by attempting to assassinate, by plotting to assassinate, Ambassador al-Jubeir here in Washington, D.
C.
When Arbabsiar had returned to Texas after meeting his cousin in Iran, and a female friend introduced him to her nephew, who she believed was a member of the Los Zetas Mexican cartel, only, her nephew turned out to be a DEA informant.
There's definitely nothing normal about this case, and about the approach that Arbabsiar made to the source.
I don't know that the hitman market is particularly an open market.
His going theory is that narcotics traffickers, Mexican cartels, are known for their violence.
That those would be the kind of people who'd not only be willing to do a hit for a significant amount of money, but would also be the kind of folks who would have access to the kind of equipment that you would need to execute a hit like that.
During the questioning of Arbabsiar, the FBI and federal prosecutor zone in on a few different objectives.
The agents play back some of Arbabsiar's conversations recorded by the informant.
It was making Part of what was going on was making it clear to him that, you know, this was not a case he could win, and that there was a lot of knowledge that the agents already had, and perhaps the best option for him to, uh minimize his ultimate exposure to a long, long prison sentence, would be to help us, to help the United States to build the case against his Iranian handlers.
Realizing that he is now fully implicated in a terrorist plot against the United States, Arbabsiar attempts to strike up a deal with the FBI.
The FBI, wisely, asked Arbabsiar to call Shakuri, his cousin, the Quds Force officer, back in Iran, and outline the details of the plot as they stood, and get, yet again, an order from Shakuri to go ahead and conduct this attack that would have killed hundreds of Americans.
It was a very clever piece of interviewing technique and investigative technique by the FBI.
They deserve great credit for it.
Arbabsiar may have thought that he was going to be offered some leniency.
He made a number of phone calls back to Iran that were recorded.
Uh He spoke with his handler, Gholam Shakuri.
I'm Effectively, I'm paraphrasing here: "I'm in New York.
" Um Shakuri said, you know, "Okay, glad to hear it.
You're safe.
" And he's, like, "I am.
" And, you know Then Shakuri said, you know, "You need to go forward with the operation.
Buy the Chevrolet.
" I'm in New York.
- Glad to hear it.
You're safe.
- I am.
You need to go forward with the operation.
Buy the Chevrolet.
Just do it quickly.
It's late.
Just buy it for me and bring it already.
Chevrolet was the code word for the operation to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador.
And that allowed us to have, not just Arbabsiar's word on the recordings that he worked with others, um, in Iran, but we actually had their word that they were working with Arbabsiar to assassinate the Saudi ambassador.
And, at some point, he pulled the trigger.
He said, "Enough is enough.
I want my lawyer.
I want to stop helping you.
" During the 12 days of interviews, Arbabsiar discloses information authorities describe as extremely valuable intelligence.
So, in trying to understand the outrageousness of the plot, and why the Iranians would risk so much to kill one person, is that, the Saudis and the Iranians had a longstanding feud, and so, if they were able to pull this off, um they could look at the Saudis and say, "We can find you, and we will get you anywhere in the world.
The most safe place you might think, whether in your home, or in the United States, in Washington, D.
C.
, of all places, where you might be letting your guard down, we will find you, and we will kill you.
" So, there was a big upside for them, if that was had it gone off that way.
But, the downside could have been a world war.
The idea that they were gonna kill a number of people, potentially hundreds of people on U.
S.
soil, just to kill one ambassador, or just to be able to make a point with the Saudis, is hard to believe, but, this is a gamble that they were willing to take at the time.
The deadly Iranian gamble didn't pay off, thanks to the hard work and bravery of those working the Iranian Threat Network.
For me, I think the biggest thing that I took away from this case was the incredible operability between all the different nodes of the government that came together to work to further uncover the plot and, you know, assist in it being rendered to justice.
You know, the DEA did a phenomenal job in obviously having a source that was, you know, that was obviously well-placed, um and receiving the information and then reporting the information to the FBI.
Everybody was selfless and everybody was an altruist in trying to do just the 100% right thing to do, which was to stop the Iranian government from trying to murder this ambassador, and effectively, anybody else that would be hurt in the process.
The agents are the ones who put their lives on the lines every day, and you get to sit in the office, and be safe and comfortable.
But, ultimately, they pass the ball to you to finish it off.
Um And given how much work, and how much danger the agents put themselves in, you really don't want to mess that up.
Um So, there's a tremendous amount of pressure to get it done right, and have justice be done, and you want that person to be punished.
And you want the message to get out that these acts will be prosecuted and prosecuted severely.
Although Iran denies all knowledge of the plot, Mansour Arbabsiar pleads guilty and is sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiring with Iranian military officials to assassinate a foreign dignitary.
Um Use of interstate commerce in a in an assassination for hire, as well as conspiracies to engage in this conduct, um interstate, uh terrorist act.
Gholam Shakuri is indicted as co-conspirator in the plot, but there are still many loose ends.
Shakuri, the Quds Force case officer who was involved in killing Americans in the past, and plotted to kill more Americans here, is still at large.
Shakuri is undoubtedly out there and plotting and planning to kill Americans today.
Many are frustrated by what they believe have been the inactions of the United States.
The Iranians paid no price whatsoever for their plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.
C.
They had plausible deniability by going to the Los Zetas, or a person they thought was the Los Zetas, to carry it out, but the rest of their trade craft in the operation was so sloppy that they didn't care if the United States knew.
And that shows the lack of fear and respect that Tehran has for Washington.
I was very surprised at the direction that we took after the Saudi ambassador plot had been exposed.
Um I thought that it rose to a level that, you know, there could actually be some type of military response on the part of the United States.
In terms of the consequences to Iran as a result of this plot, you know, you can look at this in the long history of all this terrorism that Iran keeps doing it over and over and over again.
And frankly, it's not by no means the most serious terrorist attack they've ever been responsible for.
They have been responsible for, for example, the deaths of many, many U.
S.
service people in Iraq because of the weapons and training that they supply there.
And they've been doing this for years and years, and one could argue, just continually getting away with it.
You had the Iranian government backing an assassination on U.
S.
soil that could've resulted in the deaths of many, many, many people.
So, to say that we got lucky, and we foiled it, and therefore, nothing was going to be done, was surprising.
I don't think that people realize that we're not dealing with people that randomly radicalize and subscribe to an ideology and become hobbyist terrorists and build hobby bombs.
We're talking about a government's ability to network and get their hands on military technology and excrete those things underneath our radar.
We're talking about a level of sophistication in terms of explosives and weaponry that people had not seen, that only militaries have seen.
And it would've been something very similar to a war zone.
The plot also highlights the potential for terrorist networks to align themselves with Mexican drug cartels.
Hezbollah, which is a terrorist proxy of Iran, is very significantly involved in the drug trade.
They don't like to admit that, but that's a fact.
As to links between Hezbollah, thus the Iranians, and the Mexican cartels, it stands to reason that the first time that the Iranians approached the Mexican cartels would not have been to ask them to do something as dramatic as assassinate a Saudi ambassador in Washington D.
C.
After the 2011 plot to kill the ambassador, the U.
S.
State Department reports a marked resurgence of Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism.
The IRGC's Quds Force is suspected of directing terror attacks in Georgia, India, Thailand and Kenya in 2012.
More recently, Iran has been, of course, extremely active in the Syrian Civil war, and inside Iraq.
Militarily, Iran is moving from success to success.
So, my view of Iran and the threat network that it represents is that it's the most malignant threat to the United States by way of terrorism, and the fact that they are smart and stay beneath the radar and that they aren't trying to put scores up on the board, so to speak, by driving vans into people in random acts of violence, the fact that they lay beneath the surface to do incredibly insidious things, and are capable of it, and could do many of them at once around the world, places them in a category all unto their own.
I testified before Congress in 1986, and I said then, in 1986, that the single greatest threat to American security from international terrorism were those organizations sponsored by Iran.
That's a long time ago, and I'm certain that if you gave testimony today, the answer would be roughly the same.
The Iranians have killed probably about a thousand Americans since 1983, blowing up embassies, Marine barracks, hijacking aircraft, and killing our soldiers in Iraq.
It's not an accident that more plots have not succeeded in the United States since 9/11.
People grow complacent because of the success that our intelligence, and law enforcement, and special operations communities have had in using the new surveillance and legal authorities that have been given to them.
But the threat is just as severe as it was on September 10th.
The Iranian people and their culture is very different than the regime.
And I think for many Iranians, they're, you know, trying to find a way to navigate between living their lives the way that they want to live them and doing it underneath an oppressive government.
This is not a war that you win on defense.
Politicians will stand up and start talking about more fences, more more physical barriers.
Yes, that's necessary, but that's the last line of defense.
You want to beat them long before that.
Counterterrorism is hard work, but the people involved in it do it because they understand its significance, and the fact that people's lives depend on their success.
To those who have devoted their lives to the cause, the fight is personal.
I can paint it for you.
The difficulty is, I've seen these things first hand, and it kind of It goes to my experiences.
I lost three.
Actually, I lost my closest friend today in 2005, with two other guys.
Um Fuck, I'm not gonna cry on camera.
No, that's okay.
Um So, like, it's When I go to describing what this shit looks like, it's because I've You know I tried to find his fucking head for half of a day, and the asshole who killed him had it, and then we found him six months later, and he didn't live.
But, like The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people here in the United States.