Steve Watson
The already dubious ?Iranian? terror plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, continues to unravel into farce with the revelation that the so called ?mastermind? behind the plot is a failed used car salesman described by those who know him as a ?joke?. While The Justice Department is hyping the notion that 56-year-old Iranian-born U.S. citizen Manssor Arbabsiar was participating in a dastardly Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia?s U.S. ambassador, details have emerged that make the already farcical case look like a badly scripted comedy.
Local media in Austin and San Antonio spoke to several of Arbabsiar?s acquaintances in Round Rock and Corpus Christi, who described him in most unflattering terms, saying that they doubt Arbabsiar could have had any meaningful involvement in the supposed international ploy.
?He used to drink, smoke pot, go with the prostitutes,? Tom Hosseini, an Iranian who has known Arbabsiar since college, told reporters, adding ?His first wife left him because he would lose his keys every other day. This guy is not a mastermind.?
Hosseini also told reporters that in college Arbabsiar earned the nickname ??Jack? for his affinity for whisky, confirming that he wasn?t in any way religious and that ?he couldn?t even pray, doesn?t know how to fast.?
Describing Arbabsiar as rude, offensive and unfriendly, others noted that he was a ?floundering? businessman who at various points had tried his hand in running a restaurant, a convenience store and a used car lot.
?He was pretty disorganised, always losing things like keys, titles, probably a thousand cell phones,? David Tomscha, who ran the small used-car yard with him, said. ?He wasn?t meticulous with taking care of things.?
?He never spoke ill of the United States,? Mr Tomscha added. ?I always thought he liked it here, because he could make money. He loved to make money.?
Arbabsiar, who has a history of run ins with the law and minor criminal offences, was described in other accounts as having a preoccupation with traveling to Iran in order to procure the services of cheap Persian prostitutes.
Another local acquaintance, Mitch Hamueen, scoffed at the DOJ suggestion that ?Chevrolet? was a code word for the alleged terror operation.
?He probably wasn?t talking in code, he was probably talking about an actual Chevrolet,? he said.
?He?s the fall guy,? Hamueen said. ?They?re looking for a fall guy.?
Reporters also spoke with Arbabsiar?s apparently estranged wife who told them ?I know that his innocence is going to come out.?
The Obama administration contends that Arbabsiar tried to hire assassins from a Mexican drug gang to carry out the murder of ambassador Adel al-Jubeir during a visit to the United States.
However, the head of the drug gang turned out to be a DEA agent posing as a Mexican Los Zetas gangster. The story has all the hallmarks of classic FBI entrapment tactics that have characterized almost every major terror bust in recent times.
Nevertheless, Everyone from Hillary Clinton to John Kerry has pounced on the allegations, suggesting there is a wider conspiracy, that sanctions should be placed on Iran, and that even further action should not be ruled out.
It remains thoroughly unclear why members of the Iranian elite Quds Force would select a bumbling scatterbrained halfwit to communicate with hardcore Mexican drug gangs and carry out an assassination inside the U.S.
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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones? Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.
