Vice President Joe Biden says that “nothing is off the table” in the U.S. response to the Iranian plot:
Here’s some of the ABC News website report on the interview:
Vice President Joe Biden said today that “nothing has been taken off the table” when it comes to the U.S. response to an alleged plot by Iran to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. and unleash deadly terrorist bombings in Washington, D.C.
“It is an outrageous act that the Iranians are going to have to be held accountable,” Biden told ABC News’ “Good Morning America”. “This is really over the top.”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Tuesday the DEA and FBI had disrupted a plot “conceived, sponsored and… directed from Iran” to murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. in or outside a crowded Washington, D.C. restaurant which potentially would have been followed up by bombings of the Saudi Arabian and Israeli embassies. The U.S. said an Iranian-American, 56-year-old Manssor Arbabsiar of Corpus Christi, Texas, was working for elements of the Iranian government when he attempted to hire hitmen from the feared Zetas Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit, but Arbabsiar was unwittingly speaking to a DEA informant from the start.
Senior Obama administration officials had previous told ABC News the U.S. response would not include the possibility of an armed conflict with Iran and — though a complaint filed in federal court directly tied Iran’s elite Quds military unit to the plot — there was no information that Iran’s top leaders were aware or had any role.
Biden said the U.S. was in the process of “uniting world opinion” against Iran as it goes forward with a response. The U.S. Treasury Department announced Tuesday sanctions against five Iranians allegedly tied to the plot..
Here’s a PDF of the U.S. complaint about this plot.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.