Iran Keeps Velvet Glove On Its Iron Fist After Israeli Sucker Punch

The Excavator,

On Thursday, November 10, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States and Israel against attacking Iran, saying:

"Anybody who takes up the idea of an attack on Iran, should get ready to receive a strong slap and an iron fist."

Two days after Khamenei made those remarks, Israel and the shadow government in the United States tested Iran's mettle.

On Saturday, November 12, Israel teamed up with the MEK, a notorious terrorist cult that has killed numerous CIA agents and Iranian officials in the past, to kill nearly 17 Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers at an Iranian military base near Tehran. Among the dead was the founder of the country's missile defense, Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam.

At a funeral held on Monday for the Martyrs who died in the attack, Tehran's mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf sang Moghaddam's praises and acknowledged that he was killed by Iran's enemies, saying:

"Martyr Moghadam was unknown in the Revolutionary Guard. Our enemies knew him better than our friends. He is irreplaceable."

The mayor's emotional speech diverted from the official line of the Iranian government, which is calling the Israeli attack an "accident."

Nobody would like to see Iran respond with irrational passion and blind anger more than Israel. So Iranian leaders are following a smart and sensible strategy at this time. Revenge can wait for now.
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Attacking Israel would play into its hands, since it badly wants a war with Iran to divert domestic attention from the Israeli social justice movement and international attention from the Palestinian diplomatic struggle that has already claimed major victories on the international stage.

The journalist/blogger Richard Silverstein originally broke the story that the Mossad and the MEK attacked Iran on Saturday. In an interview with Scott Horton of Antiwar.com on November 15, Silverstein said that this latest act of Israeli aggression against Iran is part of a longer "black ops program" that Israel is using against Iran.

Silverstein told Horton:

"There is a two-pronged strategy that Israel and the U.S. is following with regards to Iran. One track might be a direct military attack on Iran to try to take out their nuclear facilities. And the alternate approach is this black ops program which has involved major acts of terror at missile bases.

FBI Account of "Terror Plot" Suggests Sting Operation

IPS
Gareth Porter

When they are not busy supplying drugs to Mexican
drug lords, they're tapping their Mexican contacts
to help create a false flag to implicate Iran.

WASHINGTON, Oct 13, 2011 (IPS) - While the administration of Barack Obama vows to hold the Iranian government "accountable" for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of an FBI "sting" operation.

Although the legal document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Quds Force, in a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, it also suggests that the idea originated with and was strongly pushed by a undercover DEA informant, at the direction of the FBI.

On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.

In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia".

Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official", wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium".

Because of opium entering Iran from Afghanistan, Iranian authorities hold 85 percent of the world's opium seizures, according to Iran's Fars News Agency. Iranian security personnel, including those in the IRGC and its Quds Force, then have the opportunity to sell the opium to traffickers in the Middle East, Europe and now Mexico.

Mexican drug cartels have begun connecting with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, in many cases stationing operatives in Middle East locations to facilitate heroin production and sales, according to a report last January in Borderland Beat.

But the FBI account of the contacts between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant does not reference any discussions of drugs.

The criminal complaint refers to an unspecified number of meetings between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant in late June and the first two weeks of July.

What transpired in those meetings remains the central mystery surrounding the case.