An Iranian agent whom the US authorities have linked with the Quds Forces - the international action body of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard led by the late General Qasem Soleimani - was involved in a plot in Mexico to commit terrorist acts in the United States, according to reports of the Administration for Drug Control (DEA).
Soleimani died this Friday in Baghdad during a bombing ordered by US President Donald Trump.
This Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence wrote on Twitter that Soleimani had been behind a failed conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington in 2011, allegedly partly conspired to the south of the border.
What was plotted from Mexico? And were the cartels involved?
A US DEA officer who posed as a drug trafficker for the Zetas cartel offered help to an Iranian-American citizen to commit a terrorist attack in Washington DC
In October 2011, the Justice Department reported that he had arrested Manssor Arbabsiar, a dual-national entrepreneur (residing in the United States), accused of meeting with a DEA informant posing as a Zetas boss, the Millennium newspaper.
The undercover agent, identified in the reports only as CS-1 (confidential informant 1), conspired between May and October 2011 with Arbabsiar to blow up a bomb at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington DC or at a restaurant in the city, according to court documents consulted by the newspaper cited.
The false hierarchy of the Zetas posed as an explosives expert. Arbabsiar offered him 1.5 million dollars if he eliminated the Saudi ambassador, Adel Al-Jubeir. The plan had two variants: exploding the bomb at the embassy or in a restaurant where the diplomat used to go to dinner.
Meanwhile, Arbabsiar was being recorded. On one occasion, the Iranian agent went on to say that he was not careful if there were collateral victims: "They want to throw themselves into that guy (the ambassador), if one hundred people die, they fuck . "
Other talks included plans to blow up the Israeli embassy in Washington and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Arbabsiar even paid the undercover agent $ 100,000 as a sign of goodwill with the alleged Zetas cartel, but the money ended up in an FBI account.
The false zeta assured him that he was an expert in explosives, although criminal groups rarely use this instrument in Mexico. El Universal newspaper drew up a list in January 2019 of the car bomb attacks of the last three decades; In total, he found nine cases that accounted for only seven deaths and several dozen injured.
Arbabsiar was cited in Mexico to continue with the talks. But it was part of the trap. The US authorities informed the Interior Ministry of the arrival of the man and he was arrested at the international airport of Mexico City on September 28, 2011.
After being tried in the United States, the alleged member of the Quds Forces was sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack.
“The scarecrow of 'narcoterrorism'”
Despite the attention that the so-called 'narcoterrorism' has aroused in the news media, the phenomenon has more presence in the public discussion than in reality, points out the sociologist Fernando Escalante, a research professor at El Colegio de México.
To date there has been no terrorist attack in the United States or Mexico carried out with the collaboration of criminal organizations and groups of Islamic fundamentalism. There has not even been a terrorism campaign (with a political objective) orchestrated by drug traffickers against the Mexican or US government, as happened in Colombia with Pablo Escobar.
“The idea of 'narco-terrorism' is very attractive, in advertising terms, and that is why it had been used more or less inaccurately since the late 1980s. It brings together many fears, of a very different nature, and paints a formidable enemy, who asks for heroic violence, ”explains the academic in the Istor magazine article.
On the case of Arbabsiar, he believes the following:
“The attack did not occur. Strictly speaking, he didn't even prepare, because there was no one willing to do it. That is to say: there was nothing but the fantasy of an emigrant, and the cunning of a DEA employee, taking advantage of him, did he need to refer to it the highest authority of the justice system? What consequences does this have to be done? For a terrorist organization, which would like to inspire fear of American society, it is an ideal scenario, since the announcement of an attack has effects very similar to those of the attack, at no cost. ”
“In his judicial statement, Arbabsiar explained that because of his business 'he knew many people who were traveling between the two countries, and that he believed that some were drug traffickers'; and said that his cousin suggested "to look for someone who was in the drug business, because people in that business are willing to commit crimes in exchange for money." In other words, the idea that Mexican smugglers could partner with Islamic terrorists to carry out attacks in the United States is an occurrence of the alleged Iranian conspirators, fueled by an employee of the US government, ”says Escalante.
The investigator points out that 'narcoterrorism' ends up having real consequences because it persists in the imagination of the Americans and in the discourse of the security agencies of their government. In that sense, it is a useful rhetoric to maintain and increase border surveillance resources.
"The problem is that no concrete results can be offered to reassure anyone, because no narco-Islamist conspiracy has been discovered, drug trafficking has not stopped, nor have Mexican drug traffickers and gang members disappeared from the American cities," he concludes. Escalante