Claim of Iran Drug Cartel Link Confounds U.S.
Claim of Iran Drug Cartel Link Confounds U.S.
While speaking about the likelihood of Mexican cartel involvement in the claimed plot against the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., AS/COA's Christopher Sabatini said the sum allegedly offered to the cartel was "chump change compared to the money they're making from moving coke."
Who do you call if you want to carry out a high-profile hit on US territory? Ask Mansoor Arbabsiar, it has been claimed, and the answer could well be the Zetas, Mexico’s fearsome, drug-cartel killing machine.
This week, the US State Department claimed that Mr Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old Iranian-American with alleged connections to Iran’s Quds Force, part of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, had attempted to hire the Mexican drug gang to assassinate Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington...
...Moisés Naím, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that the criminal organisation today is looser and its command structure more horizontal than before, making the gang potentially more open to jobs outside its core competence of drug trafficking.
“If anyone wants to hire the Zetas, it can be arranged without the top echelons knowing,” he said. “The Zetas are not as monolithic as they once were. The organisation is trending towards becoming a franchise.”
Yet most analysts see any possible Zeta interest in such a plot as far-fetched. For a start, the US$1.5m that Mr Arbabsiar had supposedly agreed to pay the organisation is “chump change compared to the money they’re making moving coke”, says Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas.
