Quds, Zetas & Mansour Arbabsiar: Is There Evidence for This Plot?

Real Iran Government Plot, or Fast & Furious Distraction?

The reason we're not spending more time on the alleged Iranian Quds/Mexican Zetas Saudi ambassador assassination plot is because there are still too many holes in the story to take it at face value. It simply does not pass the sniff test. Even former NSA officials aren't convinced.

You can read the FBI indictment here: The Quds, a section of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, allegedly hired the Zetas to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.C., using a salesman named Mansour Arbabsiar as an intermediary. Cue saber-rattling in Washington, Iran, and Riyadh.

It turns out that there isn't any real evidence put forward to support this elaborate story of Iranian spies contacting a guy in the Zetas who just happens to be a US informant?

Turns out that the "evidence" so far is just inference based on past analyses. In other words, it isn't evidence. Conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this, and anyone with a degree of common sense will raise an eyebrow.

A few questions:

• The elite Quds would contact a random guy in a Mexican drug cartel (already compromised by moles from both sides of the border) to carry out a hit in Washington, DC?
• They'd use an amateur like Mansour Ababsiar in their plot, a broke used-car salesman whom neighbors basically described as a chump?
• The Zetas would expose themselves like this for a religious-fundamentalist group with whom they have no connection?
  
• The alleged plotters would communicate over unsecured phone lines?
• All of the above should be taken in light of the fact that this would be the Quds' first known assassination attempt on foreign soil.
• Why weren't the "high-ranking Quds officials" mentioned in the indictment, actually indicted?
  
• How would killing a Saudi ambassador help Iran?
  

Maybe the Quds really were as stupid as the ATF: remember, indictments for the gong-show that was Fast and Furious were imminent before this story miraculously emerged. Maybe, if we're dumb enough to send guns into the hands of drug cartels, Iran is dumb enough to hire random salesmen to orchestrate assassinations.

Or there could have been a real plot, though not one that was actually tied to the Iranian government (which would have maintained some sort of operating standards, surely): the revelation of the plot sure takes the heat off Eric Holder, who's up to his neck in Fast & Furious.

What do you think?