U.S. conservatives urge to punish Iran for alleged plot

The Obama administration should punish Iran for alleged plott to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington by waging a covert war that includes lethal strikes against Iranian intelligence operatives, a group of conservatives told a joint House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, The Los-Angeles Times reported.

"Why are we permitting the Quds Force leaders who have been organizing this killing of us for 30 years to go around still walking around?" asked retired General Jack Keane, an influential military thinker who helped craft the 2007 troop buildup in Iraq. "Why don't we kill them? We kill other people who are running terrorist organizations against the United States."

Although Republican lawmakers criticized the administration's approach to Iran as not aggressive enough, Democrats argued that the current regime of sanctions had worked to slow Iran's quest to develop nuclear weapons. All agreed that the alleged plot was a serious provocation that merited a response. At issue was what sort of response.

Suggestions ranged from limited cyber attacks to covert CIA action and unilateral U.S. raids.

Two weeks earlier, the U.S. authorities said they had broken up plans by two men linked to Iranian Quds Force - a special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - to assassinate Saudi Ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubeir.

Iran denies the allegations saying the U.S. uses this tactic to slander again Iran. The IRGC also rejected any involvement of the Quds force in the plot alleged by the United States.

The Quds Force and its predecessors were responsible for several attacks against American interests, including the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 servicemen.

In mid-October, David Cohen, the U.S. Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, announced that the Obama administration is considering sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran for an alleged plot by Iran to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington.

Such sanctions would aim to isolate the Central Bank of Iran from the world economic system by barring any firm that deals with it from doing business with U.S. financial institutions.

But it's unclear whether sanctions can be toughened meaningfully without the approval of countries such as China and Russia, which have long resisted disrupting their trading relationships with Iran.

Russia, which helped Iran build its only functioning nuclear power plant at Bushehr, and China, which is one of the current major trade partners, have traditionally taken a softer position on Iran than other veto-holding UN Security Council powers the United States, UK and France.

In spite of joining the United States, UK, France and Germany in the approval of Resolution 1929 in June, 2010, Russia and China insist on a diplomatic solution and on following a dual-path strategy for Iran, involving the combination of sanctions and negotiations.


/Trend/