Teheran's James Bond

Moisés Naím / El País

His name is Mansour Arbabsiar, his nickname is "Scarface" and some of his friends in Texas, where he has lived for many years, call him Jack. He is one of Iran's James Bonds. If Jack is Teheran's 007, then Gholam Shakuri, a member of Iran's Al Quds unit, the special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, may be 006. Abdul Reza Shahlai is perhaps the equivalent to Miss Moneypenny, who in the Bond movies was the secretary to M, the boss of all the spies.

The US government says that Jack was contacted by his cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior officer in the Al Qods unit. They had a brilliant plan: to kill the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States. A good way of doing this, they decided, was to bomb a restaurant that the ambassador frequented. The fact that blasting a popular Washington restaurant would result in the loss of many innocent lives was also discussed. Jack's opinion? "No big deal."

But the brilliant ideas of Jack, Abdul Reza and Golam didn't stop there; they had more. Like, for example, outsourcing the assassination to the Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel. Once the idea was approved in Teheran and the money started flowing from an Iranian bank, Teheran's James Bond got to work. He searched for, and identified, the Mexican "service providers," negotiated the fees ($1.5 million), discussed and agreed on the modus operandi (bomb), timing (as soon as possible) and future collaboration (bombing embassies in Washington and Buenos Aires, deeds on which Iran already had some experience). The only small problem in this plan was that, in this case, the Mexican "service provider" had other clients, for example the US government, or, more specifically the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). As a result, the FBI captured Jack and put together a 21-page complaint that it presented to a judge in New York describing the plot in great detail (you can read it here)

For some, this accusation is simply another trick by the same country that lied about invading Iraq. Such is the opinion of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He thinks that the accusation stems from the fact that the Occupy Wall Street movement is about to topple the US government.

"The merciless American government is trying to repress the movement, but it will not succeed... [The movement] will continue to grow and will bring down capitalism and the West with it," he said. The ayatollah is concerned about the fierce repression by the New York police. "They are treating the demonstrators harshly, and in ways that we have not even seen in underdeveloped countries run by dictators" (Whoever could he have been thinking of?).

For the Supreme Leader, the US lie has an obvious reason: US President Barack Obama needs to distract the world from the imminent American collapse. And what better distraction than accusing the mullahs, who have never resorted to violence at home or abroad, of trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador?

What is the real story here? We will not know for a while. But this we do know: 1) Every time that the US government has manipulated information to justify invading another country, the truth has eventually surfaced. Obama knows that he would be committing political suicide if he tried to emulate George W. Bush. 2) The conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran over influence in the Middle East has reached unprecedented levels. 3) The Ayatollah (who controls the Al Quds unit) and President Ahmadinejad are locked in a bitter fight for political power. 4) Bad economic policies and international sanctions have hit Iran's economy hard, exacerbating political infighting. 5) During periods of crisis idiots are more likely to make important decisions without much supervision. 6) The Occupy Wall Street movement will not topple Obama, or the West.