Bird’s Eye: We’re reading fairly unanimous scepticism among serious commentators about the purported Iranian plot, supposedly run by a complete incompetent who was supposed to hire Mexican drug cartels to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. So, as Cicero said, cui bono? (Who gains?) This has all the hallmarks of a false flag operation, designed to demonize Iran… and at a time when the US and Israel, who have jointly assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists, need a scapegoat to deflect huge internal protest. Not just fake, but badly done fake. (Here are some real examples of Middle East terrorism, fwiw)

* Why Obama Needs to Come Clean about the “Iranian Plot”  Stephen M. Walt

I don’t know what actually happened here, and I remain open to the possibility that there really was some sort of officially-sanctioned Iranian plot to assassinate foreign ambassadors here on U.S. soil. But the more I think about it, the less plausible whole thing appears. In particular, blowing up buildings in the United States is an act of war, and history shows that the United States is not exactly restrained when it responds to direct attacks on U.S. soil…. Iran’s leaders are not stupid, and surely they would have known that a plot like this ran the risk of triggering a very harsh U.S. response. Given that extraordinary risk, is it plausible to believe they would have entrusted such a sensitive mission to a serial bungler like Ababsiar? If you are going to attack a target in the United States, wouldn’t you send your A Team, instead of Mr. Magoo?  Hence the growing skepticism, including the possibility that this might be some sort of “false flag” operation by whatever groups or countries might benefit from further deterioration in U.S.-Iranian relations. 

* Wagging the Dog with Iran’s Maxwell Smart Juan Cole Informed Comment

It seems pretty obvious that Arbabsiar is very possibly clinically insane. Here are the top 10 reasons that he cannot be Iran’s answer to 007:

10. Arbabsiar was known in Corpus Christi, Texas, “for being almost comically absent-minded”

9. Possibly as a result of a knife attack in 1982, he suffered from bad short-term memory

8. He was always losing his cell phone

7. He was always misplacing his keys

6. He was always forgetting his briefcase and documents in stores

5. He “was just not organized,” a former business partner remarked

4. As part owner of a used car dealership, he was always losing title deeds to the vehicles

3. Arbabsiar, far from a fundamentalist Shiite Muslim, may have been an alcoholic; his nickname is “Jack” because of his fondness for Jack Daniels whiskey

2. Arbabsiar used to not only drink to excess, but also used pot and went with prostitutes. He once talked loudly in a restaurant about going back to Iran, where he could have an Iranian girl for only $50. He was rude and was thrown out of some establishments.

1. All of his businesses failed one after another

* The “very scary” Iranian Terror plotGlen Greenwald  Salon

The ironies here are so self-evident it’s hard to work up the energy to point them out. Outside of Pentagon reporters, Washington Post Editorial Page Editors, and Brookings “scholars,” is there a person on the planet anywhere who can listen with a straight face as drone-addicted U.S. Government officials righteously condemn the evil, illegal act of entering another country to commit an assassination? Does anyone, for instance, have any interest in finding out who is responsible for the spate of serial murders aimed at Iran’s nuclear scientists? Wouldn’t people professing to be so outraged by the idea of entering another country to engage in assassination be eager to get to the bottom of that?

Then there’s the War on Terror irony: our Hated Enemy here (Iran) is a country which had absolutely nothing  to do with the 9/11 attack. Meanwhile, our close ally, the victim on whose behalf we are so outraged (Saudi Arabia), is not only one of the most tyrannical and aggressive regimes on the planet, but produced 15 of the 19 hijackers and had extensive and still-unknown involvement in that attack. If the U.S. is so deeply offended by the involvement of a foreign government in an attack on U.S. soil, it would be looking first to its close friend Saudi Arabia, where “elements of the government” were likely involved in an actual plot rather than a joke of a plot.