Processing the strange Iranian terrorist plot

Quite understandably, various commentators are trying to make sense of an absurd plan by Iran’s IRGC to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Spencer Ackerman thinks it sounds like it “passed through a bull’s digestive tract.” And the Iranian government, innovators of the conspiracy theory, believe the story was concocted to distract people from the Occupy Wall Street movement. Right. (Khamenei believes the protest movement will be the downfall of the free market economy in the U.S. Shows you how much he understands American political culture.)

Given access to only the indictment papers everyone else, I can only guess based on the past history of Iran how credible the allegations are. There might be enough circumstantial evidence to say the charges are plausible, but in the absence of better information, it’s too hard to say for sure.

One thing Ackerman finds hard to believe is how harebrained the scheme is. (I am equally befuddled, as are many others.) However, Iran has done incredibly foolish things before with little regard for its well-being. For instance, Iran rejected an offer by Saddam Hussein in mid-1982 to suspend the Iran-Iraq war and return to the status quo ante, which was roughly where each side’s forces were at that time, anyway. Ayatollah Khomeini rejected the ceasefire offer, and — believing he was acting on God’s will — insisted that Iran invade Iraq with the aim of deposing Hussein and replacing him with a Shia Islamist. Six more years of war and Iran didn’t gain an inch of land.

Iran has also conducted audacious overseas bombings out of spite, such as when it directed Hizballah to blow up a Jewish community center in Argentina in retaliation for that government’s cancellation of a nuclear cooperation agreement.

The involvement of Mexican drug cartels as participants in the disrupted plot does not discredit the involvement of Iran’s Quds Force at all; Hizballah is well-known to have established fundraising and recruitment networks in Latin America, including Mexico.

Ackerman’s observation that the plot would have been a strategic catastrophe reinforces in his mind the idea that this makes the Quds Force look like, in his words, “blithering idiots” and “miscalculating buffoons.” This is too simplistic, just like it would be simplistic to label the SVR (the reincarnation of the KGB) a third-rate clown school after 10 of their spies did pretty terrible jobs spying on the U.S. Hell, even the CIA has had clueless operatives — like the ones who got busted in Italy carrying out an abduction. Regardless, Iran’s hardliners do struggle to calculate American foreign policies, and a few IRGC musclemen might have been under some loony impression that this bombing would be worthwhile.

The last point goes back to the outlandish and unusual nature of the suspected plot. If the U.S. government was going to invent charges of terrorism against Iran, why would it draw up a story so exceptionally bizarre, one which would draw such a skeptical reaction?