Would Iran have attempted to partner with Mexican Cartels and attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, and perhaps others, if George Bush was sitting in the Oval Office?

Jordan Williams, a reporter from a local television station in Rio Grande, Texas, reports parts of the story

involving the Mexican Cartel that reveal just how dangerous a threat was posed:

A plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States is hitting close to home. Federal investigators say a man crossed our border and went to Reynosa.

Terrorist Manssor Arbabsiar Had Ties To Iran Special Forces And Taliban

The main suspect, Manssor Arbabsiar, came to Reynosa twice earlier this year. Prosecutors say he met with an undercover DEA agent. He thought the agent was a Zeta. The feds say Arbabsiar had the backing of his cousin who was back in Iran working in the country’s special forces. They have ties to the Taliban.

This time investigators stopped a major catastrophe. The suspects were planning on carrying out an attack in a public restaurant.

“The fact that you have weapons of mass destruction and the drug cartels are cooperating with Iran, what won’t they do for money?” says Jefferey Addicott from the Center for Terrorism Studies at St. Mary’s University.

Federal investigators say $1.5 million would have bought an Iranian American, his cousin and a group of Iranian terrorists an assassination attempt on a Saudi ambassador.

“They want to kill a large number, not just the Saudi Arabian. They’re disgruntled with in particular al-Qaida and some of the more radical extremists groups,” says Addicott.

Addicott says we got lucky this time that federal investigators stopped a massive attack. Federal investigators say Manssor Arbabsiar and his cousin wanted to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al Jubair in a restaurant. Hundreds of people could have been killed.

“Yeah, that’s very bold. Again, if they’re that bold to do that, they won’t stop at nothing. If they find that they can get the cooperation from the drug cartels, that can not be good news for Americans,” says Addicott.

We started telling you about the border terrorism threat right after 9-11. We told you about terrorists working on both sides of the border in our special report “Terrorists Trail.” We learned Hezbollah, an Iranian sponsored terrorist organization, has training camps in the United States and Mexico.

“The Obama administration has to take this seriously. They have to do something other than wagging their finger and shaking their head,” says Addicott.

Addicott says the assassination attempt should be a wakeup call. He says next time we may not be lucky enough to stop terrorists from attacking us on our own soil Addicott says a large-scale terrorist plot like the assassination attempt has never been tied to Iran before.

The intelligence firm STRATFOR issued an analysis Tuesday on the alleged assassination attempt. They say the Iranian government was coordinating and supporting the terror plot.

Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri face a long list of charges, including conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism. Shakuri is a member of Iran’s Qods special force. They’re part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. We know Arbabsiar went to Mexico several times in May and June. Authorities wouldn’t let him in when he tried again Sept. 28.

STATFOR’s analysts are dissecting the alleged terror plot. They have a serious question. They want to know why Iran would approach a Mexican cartel to carry out an assassination when the Iranians likely have the capability themselves.

“It could be that Arbabsiar and Shakuri were acting on their own, or that something unusual is going on within the Iranian government,” said STRATFOR in a statement. “Regardless, because Arbabsiar’s contact in Mexico was a DEA undercover source posing as a member of a Mexican cartel, at this point the cartels have not been directly linked to this plot.”

Still, analysts say this raises serious questions about whether the cartels are willing to work with terrorist organizations.

Here’s the story from Fox News:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1213308477001/rep-mike-rogers-on-foiled-terror-plot/

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Filed under: Featured, Inside The KC, Politics, Sonja Eddings Brown by Sonja Eddings Brown, Oct 12, 2011