The "Iranian terror plot" and the Mexican drug war.

The US government has foiled a terrorist plot involving Iran, Mexican drug cartels, Cuba, Hezbollah, and Osama Bin Laden’s reanimated corpse. Ok, ok they’re actually only claiming the first two.  In news that will bring joy to 24 season writers and Tea Party members, the United States Department of Justice has allegedly exposed an Iranian terrorist plot to strike the heart of America. The Attorney General, Eric Holder outlined an alleged terror plot in which Iranian agents would oversee the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States as well as a bombing campaign against Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington DC. If that didn’t sound crazy enough, the Iranian’s were alleged to have orchestrated this plan by approaching the Mexican drug cartel Los Zeta’s for help – the cartel was to be paid $1.5 million and supplied with Iranian opium for carrying out the attacks.

US Attorney General Eric Holder

Unfortunately for the Iranians the Zeta’s contact in this (alleged) plot was in fact a DEA informant – presumably Jack Bauer on spring break getting MWI in Tijuana. As well as closely fitting the plot of a recent Tom Clancy novel, detailing Taliban collusion with the Juarez Cartel this cartel connection could ostensibly be used for deploying the US army into Mexico, to fight the increasingly brutal drug war going on there – as one Republican Presidential candidate has already suggested. This would give the United States two wars to fight, one in Mexico alongside Iran presumably. Attorney General Holder announced that in the next few hours, measures against Iran would be outlined – that could range from sanctions to bombing a fourth Muslim country in ten years.

There are two factors that may spare Iran war – one is that so far the US Government is accusing “factions” of the Iranian Government as being responsible for the plot, something quite different from saying the actual leadership of the country is behind the assassination attempt. After all it was only a few weeks ago the US accused Pakistani intelligence of supporting insurgents in Afghanistan, despite Pakistan being a US ally. Here it’s specifically it’s the Revolutionary Guard of Iran who are being accused of funding and planning this plot. The Revolutionary Guard are a 125,000 strong armed wing of the Iranian military, whose specific remit is the defence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution – similar in respects to Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, in their role as the best equipped, most loyal defence of an autocratic regime. Naturally this position gives them significant influence in Iranian society, which means it is possible they could have independently organised a terrorist plot in the United States without the knowledge of  Iran’s President Ahmadinejahd or the real power in the country, the Guardian Council. That’s one reason Iran might not be a gigantic car park by the time I finish typing.

The second reason is that Iran is no Iraq – bombing, invading and occupying Iran will not be as easy as the invasion of Iraq. And as some of our more eagle eyed readers may have noticed, invading Iraq was not the greatest plan ever. Iran is a regional power in the Middle East with an army that has not been broken under the weight of sanctions and war, as Saddam Hussein’s was by 2003. Also Iran has significant influence outside it’s borders – namely in Iraq and Lebanon, where Iranian support is provided to the Shia parties of Iraq like SCIRI (The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and more famously, Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon. Any attack on Iran would result in attacks on US personnel in Iraq and Hezbollah – which proved it’s competence as a fighting force in the 2006 war on Lebanon – attacks on America’s ally Israel. Alongside this ability to exert force across the Arab world, Iran would also be able to halt shipping through the Straits of Hormuz – effectively halting a majority of the world’s oil supplies, potentially tipping the entire world into another recession.

Why would Iran want to kill the Saudi ambassador anyway? Israel seems an obvious enough target, but why target the Saudis? Alongside the well publicized Arab-Israeli conflict, there’s another less well known cold war in the Middle East – that between the regional powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It goes right back to Iran’s revolution itself, which overthrew the pro Western monarch of Iran, The Shah. The Gulf is chock a block full of similar pro Western monarchs – in Dubai, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and the biggest one of all, Saudi Arabia. All of these rulers are shit scared at the idea of being overthrown by the poor and dispossessed sections of their society, mobilised under the flag of Islamic revolution.  One most recent example of this was in Bahrain, where the monarchy (who are Sunni Muslims, and the minority of the population) faced an uprising from the population (who are mostly Shiite Muslims). Here the US sided with Bahraini government, who allow the US to station a naval base in the country and turned a blind eye to the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s deployment of armed forces to the Kingdom to suppress the rebels.

Bahrain's uprising, crushed by Saudi troops.

The movement in Bahrain was not Islamist in nature, and a far cry from the Islamic revolution in Iran during the late 70′s – instead taking it’s inspiration from the secular movement that brought down Mubarak in Egypt. But any mobilisation of Muslims against these Gulf monarchies – specifically those of the Shia – will always be linked to Iran by their ruling elites. That’s why there’s a Saudi Arabia/Iran hostility in the Arab world – a hostility that even sometimes breaks ranks with the traditional Arab/Israeli confrontation, like when Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister described the Shiite and Iranian supported Hezbollah millitia as a “bunch of adventurers” and blamed them, and not Israel for the 2006 war.  Saudia Arabia ‘s even shares Israeli and US hostility to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme – a wikileaks cable revealed the Saudi King Abdullah was encouraging the US to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Saudi Arabia have – alongside Israel – played the role of US ally in the Middle East for decades, and have been armed to the teeth by the West. The United States simply can’t allow the world’s largest oil producer to fall to an Arab nationalist or Islamic revolution. It’s why despite spending $39 billion on arms, the Saudi Arabian army is deliberately kept weak; the weapons are “pre-positioned” to be used by US forces to quash any uprising, and the army is kept weak to stop any coup against the monarchy.

Despite all the hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia there’s still no guarantee the US Government of all people are honest in this terror accusation – America has been chomping at the bit for years to attack Iran, and now they may have their pretext. The Iranians would have to have been spectacularly reckless to believe they could blow up the Saudi Ambassador in America’s capital – particularly through the alleged middlemen of the Zeta’s cartel, a non-political organisation whose only objective is to sell drugs and make money – without facing retaliation. The Zeta cartel themselves would have a lot to lose by signing up to such a scheme – almost guaranteed US military assistance to the beleaguered Mexican Government that’s desperately trying to crush them. These accusations against the Zeta’s only serve to make them sound even more like something out of a Bond movie – the Los Zeta’s Cartel were originally an elite special forces squad in Mexico, who decided that there was a lot more money in drugs so decided to defect to the side of the cartels they used to fight. Their special forces background means they’ve been able to run rings around the Mexican state, and many US government agencies too…

Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Quality polis, aw the way.

Which brings us to scandal that’s gone unreported this side of the Atlantic, which has embroiled the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) bureau of the US Government and the Attorney General Eric Holder – who broke the story about the alleged terror plot. The scandal sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie – specifically the title – “Operation Fast and Furious”. This ATF operation didn’t involve Vin Diesel in charge of a carjacking ring though – instead it was an authorized US Government operation to force gun stores in the US to sell firearms to people with links to drug cartels. Here ATF officers ordered gun stores to sell firearms to criminals, ostensibly so they could be tracked to the leaders of the cartel and convicted on conspiracy charges. But the entire operation was blown when a US Border Patrol guard was shot dead by one of the “Fast and Furious” weapons and an ATF agent blew the whistle. It’s been described as Obama’s “potential Watergate” due to the national scandal of a US Government agency allowing the sale of thousands of firearms to be used to kill on both sides of the Mexican border. Some of the Right Wing in the USA have an easy answer as to why this gunrunning was allowed – to allow the Democrats to clamp down on gun sales in the States, in the wake of massive violence from the Cartels.

ATF Whistleblower exposes state sanctioned supply of arms to drug cartels

But there is another more convincing – and sinister- explanation; the US Government is deliberately facilitating the sale of arms to one side in the Mexican drug war – the Sinaloa Cartel – in exchange for that organisations assistance in destroying rival cartels. Rival cartels like Los Zetas. Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a top ranking cartel boss extradited to the US went further and claimed the Sinaloa Cartel were actually allowed to transport cocaine across the border without US Government interference. It may sound far fetched, but it’s happened before. The entire crack epidemic which took hold of the USA in the 80′s was orchestrated by the anticommunist Contra rebels in Nicaragua, with the CIA turning a blind eye to their shipments of cocaine to the US that were used to fund their war against the Socialist Sandinista Government.

There’s also been collaboration between US agencies and Latin American Governments with drug cartels in the past. In Colombia, during the hunt for Pablo Escobar the Billionaire drug lord, an organisation called Los Pepes sprung up. Los Pepes ostensibly stood for “People persecuted by Pablo Escobar” but was in reality a front for the Cali cartel who were in competition with Pablo’s Medellin organisation. Los Pepes were vital in helping the US bring Pablo down, as they could wage a war of terror against his family and business associates that the Colombian state was unable (openly) to do. Because Los Pepes were murdering his lawyers, cousins, business partners Pablo was unable to launch a full scale war against the Colombian wealthy for fear his wife and children may be killed (who were refused amnesty by the US).  Previously when Escobar was on the run from the Colombian state he deployed his private army to indiscriminately terrorize the wealthy in Colombia – with bombings, drive by shootings and kidnappings against the well heeled. This had the desired effect of Colombia’s elite feeling the heat of the drug war and demanding the Colombian Government give in to his demands – which were effectively to continue running his own business from a luxurious private “prison” he designed, built and staffed.

Coming soon to an ATF bureau near you.

Killing Escobar itself had no real effect on the drug trade. With Escobar removed the Cali cartel simply took over the gap in the market. And then when they were removed, the Mexican’s took over the trade. If Apple stopped producing computers tomorrow people would still buy computers – it’s just that they would buy them from Dell or Microsoft. The same principle works for cocaine. Remove one supplier and another takes their place. So why were the American’s desperate to destroy Escobar? Largely because he became a threat to the Colombian state and American security itself. Escobar did not keep his head down like the Cali cartel, and carry out business discreetly. Instead Escobar was elected as a Colombian Senator, funded welfare projects for the poor – and bombed an airline to try and assassinate a Colombian Presidential candidate who threatened him with extradition. This bombing killed US citizens, and was an unacceptable level of violence for a drug lord in the eyes of the US Government.

Given the accusations against Los Zetas – that they were approached by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to conduct terrorism - could the ATF be repeating the strategy used by previous US administrations to bring down Escobar? Perhaps Los Zetas have now become a threat to the national interests of the US in the same way Escobar was, and the US Government is willing to fund and assist a rival cartel to see their removal. There’s already been accusations that the Mexican Government has not prosecuted it’s war on drugs against the Sinaloa cartel to the same extent that it fight Los Zetas. It’s possible these accusations against Los Zetas to justify US military intervention against a well organised drug cartel manned by former special forces.

It might even be just the stimulus package the ailing Obama administration needs – invade Mexico and Iran, and kickstart your economy with World War 3.