Esfand Aashena

Well I've said this was the ambition of some crazy zealots.

The pelot is inline with the ambitions of those who want to use terrorism and create chaos.  Look what happened after 9/11, the whole world, including US has been turned upside down and life as we knew it took a change that no one could have imagined.

Assassinating the Saudi Ambassador to the US in US, is not peanuts, it is quite a major event.  In addition to what I've already outlined it is also a blow (bElow ;-) to AlQaeda who keeps mocking Iran, most recently Ahmadi's rant in UN, in their ambitions to strike in US soil again.

I do not believe all the elements in the Islamic Republic pursue all kinds of proxie wars, like they all do in Lebanon or Gaza or the West bank. 

There is an intelligence service in Iran who wants to "compete" with international spy agencies and looks like in this case someone hired an International Man of Mystery!  If you want another motive, for the pelot there have been pelots inside Iran that have been actually carried out against the Iranian nuclear scientists, so this would be another motive to strike back.  Although, I think some of those nuclear scientists were assassinated internally.

As for sparks that has started wars before, there is always a spark and no one can predict what it is.  It is not just wars, Arab spring started by someone hitting a hotdog vendor in Tunis and before that the vote rigging in Iran sparked that uprising.  The aftermath of this is yet to be tabulated but again we have our first Nationally known Iranian terrorist in custody!  

BTW did you notice the two women giggling in the pic?!

Everything is sacred

let me see.....

    Two main puzzles remain:

    -- There are bigger targets in DC that seem, to have a better cost-benefit ratio for IRI. Saudi ambassador is a peanut!

    -- Saudi has ambassadors in hundreds of other countries why choose US capital?! If there was a message to be sent don't you think Saudi reps in say, Lebanon, or Iraq or Egypt or some other African country would have been an easier target?!

       Time will tell what it really behind this ...

       Oil market will tell if this is anything serious!

What happened to WMD?

Gulf of Tonkin excuse for Vietnam ... and invented weapons of mass destruction for Iraq... and Taleban for Afghan... did ... wolf story.

HBO

will come up with the behind the scene and...

hope the whole show don't have an impact for Iranian inside or out.

And for the guy ending up in federal prison=lose of citizenship.

read it with esfahani accent    ZERENG haala bokhour

Maziar

I don't know about the pelot....

but looking at the pic in your blog, I am wondering who is uglier... the people who are holding the picture or the person that his picture is being held?

My vote goes to the person of whose picture is being held.

'Hambastegi' is the main key to victory 

Mehrdad

Well we got off the subject but this was all about the money.

I recall there were other plots few years ago that were all about "hiring" hit men to carry out terrorist plots.  This guy thought he had this all covered!  He thought he was going to an auction and just bidding to pick someone like he picks a used car! 

Mexican drug cartels kill and rampage with impunity in Mexico including the police force so why not use them for this purpose and pocket some money.  Criminals are usually not the brightest people in the world and this guy is no exception.

There is the matter of that $100,000 though that is missing from some bank account in Iran along with the recorded conversations of who owned and spent that money! 

Everything is sacred

Esfand jan, I don't know

Maybe Arash was in the area anyway and since there was a concert, he came to it.

Sobhani was in the audience.

He was sitting next to the Parazit guy in the audience near us and not part of the concert.  This was Hamed's solo concert.  I knew Hamed was from the Bay area but didn't understand why Sobhani would be in the audience.   

Everything is sacred

I think Arash Sobhani lives in the Bay area

I believe Hamed too. I had seen on facebook that Hamed is having concerts in the east coast but I did not know Kiosk had concerts back east.

Aren't Sobhani and Kiosk from San Francisco?

For some reason I thought Sobhani was living in the DC area, or he may have been here for a reason.  I don't know if Kiosk has ever had a concert in DC. 

Everything is sacred

great, my daughert met with a suopreme court judge

last week and had dinner in an italian restaurant near near georgetown. she was there with her us government class. sorry for your bad experience with the screaming woman. sobhani is from kiosk. 

Anahid jaan over the weekend I saw the Parazit guy and Sobhani.

I saw them in Hamed Nikpay's concert, BTW 5 stars except for this bitch (excuse my French) who was screaming behind us after each of Hamed's songs.  For two hours she was WOOOHOOOOOOOOOO, WOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO.  You'd get relaxed after each of Hamed's songs and then this bitch would hit your head like a sledge hammer with her screams.

Anyway, I almost went to say something to them but thought I have nothing to say!  The parazit guy is more famous than Sobhani, forgot what is Sobhani's band's name, not many people went up to them but many were signaling them with their eyes and eyebrows! 

Everything is sacred

But even in LA if you hang out at the right place, you will

see someone famous. For instance, I have not spent much time in Westwood but once I was there and I saw "Masoud Asadollahi" in a coffee shop.

You mean "another car" bomb?

I thought they were going to car bomb the Ambassador's "car" and that's what I meant jacking up his car while it is garaged and then set if off in front of the Milano restaurant.  If they were going to use "another" car, it's hard to find parking spot in that area! 

The Senators part is like going to LA and expecting to see celebrities!  They don't all come out to meet and greet the tourists! 

Everything is sacred

The Plot

Well, the plot was about a car bombing in front of the Milano Italian Restaurant on Prospect off of Wisconsin where supposedly the Ambassador and many Senators normally hang out.

والله من سیرت رو تو داستانها مثل مادر فولاد زره میدونستم!

Besides, even if Sirat means nasty inside, we're talking about SiAr and I don't think you can just drop a "t" or ignore the "A" in SiAr!

Anyway, the Saudi embassy is also close to the Kennedy Center and Georgetown and out in the open and you can't just put a bomb under the Ambassador's car!

This is another one of the details they just didn't seem to talk about and more the reason I think they talked/negotiated more about the money than the actual details.

Imagine someone putting a jack under the Ambassador's car and work underneath it in the middle of an 8 way intersection! 

Everything is sacred

Agree with both the blog and Faramarz' comments

well put.

اسفند جان، این نظر دهخدا

بدسیرت . [ ب َ رَ ] (ص مرکب ) بدخلق . بدطینت . بدرفتار. (ناظم الاطباء). بدخو. زشت خصلت . (آنندراج ).

فرامرز جان سیرت با خصلت فرق میکنه!

سیرت یعنی‌ چهره، خصلت یعنی‌ باطن!  ارباب سیرت اگر بود ok ولی‌ این سیاره، سیّاره نه ها!  شاید مثل افراسیاب باشه، هر چند که سیار با سیاب فرق میکنه! 

Everything is sacred

اسمش ارباب سیر است

سیر (سی یر) به معنی سیرت یا خصلت مثل نیکو سیر.  

فرامرز جان پولِ بیت المالِ یوم اللهِ دیگه!

Faramarz jaan I agree with you that this was a mid level Sepah decision.  I don't think Khamenei was involved directly, not that he is not capable, but he wouldn't authorize a used car salesman with dual citizenship to carry out such an important operation!

The guy reminds me of so many Iranians, many of whom beat their chests for Ahmadi being so "smart"!

When you have someone steal $3B from Iranian beytolmal you think $1.5M is of any consequence?  Mr. Bagherzadeh wrote recently that in a society where all one has to do is to "pretend" to be religious to get to high places of power, it is like kids in a candy store for criminals!  Common run of the mill criminals, like this guy and his cousins.

So this is corruption run amok.  At some point the corruption becomes so routine that the criminals in charge don't even think about the consequences that may even affect them.  I'm sure as we speak, Shakuri is paying for this dearly inside Iran.  Those above him the same.  Khamanei is going to slap Firoozabadi silly!

As for Obama, if this was Bush-Cheney during Iraq invasion, they would've used this "opportunity" to launch an attack on Iran.  Attack first and ask questions later!

But I think in this case the Administration officials realized that someone is just throwing money that doesn't have enough power.  I'm sure they first asked for more money like $5M - $10M but then the guy said that'd be above his paygrade!  He is only authorized for $1.5M!

The conversations between these people and the FBI and DEA agents must have been funny, sad but funny!  Arbabsiar must have told his connections in Iran that he knows how to sell!  He'll negotiate for less money!

The evidence is what it really is and the Administration can't fabricate other stuff and risk losing their case.  Afterall remember this guy is a US citizen and is going to be tried in a court of law in US under US laws of evidence hearing and so forth.

This may become a tantilizing court case with circus like atmosphere! 

The immediate fallout for Iran will be additional sanctions.  Just about everyone in the world is fed up with terrorism and countries lik Russia will have an incentive to join for more sanctions.  I also wouldn't put it passed the regime to throw someone under the bus as a patsy now that there is actual evidence involved. 

Everything is sacred

Esfand Jaan, My Take on This

There are two aspects of this plot that is interesting to me.

First is how high in the chain of command did the approval come from. I am of the opinion that in a system like Sepah and the IR , the big decisions are made at the highest levels, in this case by Khamenei with recommendations from Soleimanieh (Ghods) and other Sepah heads. I can’t imagine that in a hierarchical Regime like IR, a mid-level person can authorize this. I also believe that Ahmadi and his government could have been completely in the dark as far as this plot is concerned. They are not part of the Regime anymore.

Secondly, Obama Administration played an interesting game yesterday. While it talked about the seriousness of the plot to get China and Russia on-board for additional sanctions (Milano Café, Senators and 100-150 people getting killed), it also downplayed how far up the chain the plot was authorized, therefore gave itself a way out of military escalation and other tough actions at this time.