"Unusual" meeting between US, Iran over plot

[WestVirginiaRebel]

CBS News:

(CBS/AP) WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said Thursday that officials at the "highest levels" of the Iranian government must be held accountable for a brazen and bizarre plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States on American soil, insisting leaders of the world will believe the U.S. case without dispute once they absorb the details.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, confirmed the Obama administration has had direct contact with Iran over the allegations. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, met with Iranian officials at Iran's mission to the U.N. on Wednesday — a highly unusual contact for two countries that do not have diplomatic relations.

Obama would not say whether Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, knew of the alleged plan. Yet he called it part of a pattern of "dangerous and reckless behavior" by the Iranian government and said people within that government were aware of a murder-for-hire plot.

The U.S. considers it an attempted act of terrorism.

"We believe that even if at the highest levels there was not detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability with respect to anybody in the Iranian government engaging in this kind of activity," Obama said in a news conference tied to the state visit of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Iran has vehemently denied anything to do with the alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, at a Washington restaurant.
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There's some indication that Iran's right hand may not know what its left is doing, which would explain the Mickey Mouse nature of this plot.

[Valin]

Not the 1st time Iran has tried to kill people here....

 

CNN exclusive: Plotter of foiled 'hit' was allowed to return to Iran

Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick

February 21, 2011

 

Glendora, California (CNN) -- It's the kind of Southern California town made for daydreaming: Quiet streets and sunny skies, a place where tranquility seems rarely to be disturbed.

 

But according to police, as well as classified U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, the Los Angeles suburb of Glendora was the scene of an international assassination plot. The scheme involved would-be killers hiding out in a low-budget motel and an elaborate plan that, at first, involved shooting the victim, but later centered on running him over with a van, police documents disclose.

 

"I've been a police officer here for more than 20 years, and I've never investigated anything like this," said Glendora police Lt. Tim Staab.

 

It all unraveled on a late summer day in 2009, when a would-be hit man hired by an Iranian national named Reza Sadeghnia got cold feet and called police from a local gas station.

 

"This person went on to tell us that for the past four days, they together had been scheming how to assassinate, how to kill another Glendora resident," Staab said.

 

Police said the target in Glendora was Jamshid Sharmahd, an Iranian-American dissident who is the radio voice of a small group called Tondar, devoted to the overthrow of the Iranian government. The Iranian government calls Tondar a terrorist group, but the U.S. State Department says it is only a propaganda outlet.

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

Sadeghnia ultimately pleaded guilty to a charge of solicitation of murder and was jailed for eight months. But the story doesn't end there.

 

After he was released from prison in 2010, Sadeghnia applied for permission to leave the United States while he was on five years' probation and visit Iran for one month "to visit his dying father," according to probation reports. His first application was denied, but a second request was granted a few weeks later on the condition that he return no later than October 27.

 

He has not been seen in the United States since. Probation officials would not comment on the decision.

 

(Snip)

 

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