By Dr. Ismail Salami

Despite its evidently make-believe facade, the cooked-up story of the Saudi envoy assassination plot does not seem to be something which can be easily banished from the minds of the American powers that be.

The heat over Iran in the US government is growing rapidly. Some Republican congressmen have expressed their interest in waging an all-out war against Iran, a threat they keep refreshing every time they have an excuse. They have clearly stated that Washington should not dismiss the idea of resorting to military force against Iran, an idea which is being strengthened in Congress.

“I don't think you should take it off the table,” Michigan Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has said.

It is quite natural that he was vehemently supported by the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator John McCain, who have always maintained an antagonistic approach towards Iran.

Hawkish Gingrich said on CNN, “Our goal should be the replacement of the Iranian dictatorship, and we have done nothing of consequence to systematically undermine the regime.”

The US government keeps preaching at others and talking of dismantling this or that regime which they term as 'dictatorial' or 'sponsor of terrorism'. Now that the lot has fallen to the US government itself, they are at a loss and appear despondently desperate. The implosive voice that is eroding the American system from within cannot be easily smothered or contained.

Therefore, the US has to find a way to divert international attention from what is going on in the country and zoom in on Iran. This can be one simple reason but it is very plausible. However, a bigger scenario is at work in collaboration with the Mossad and other intelligence services.

Soon, Washington's political equation was abruptly disturbed when a top ISI official revealed that the man involved in the alleged assassination plot of the Saudi envoy Adel al-Jubeir had received forged documents from Mossad.

"The accused man [Mansour Arbabsiar] received fake ID documents from Mossad three months ago," the Pakistani Urdu-language Ummat Daily quoted the Inter-Services Intelligence officer as saying on condition of anonymity.

According to the Pakistani intelligence expert, the man in question was slated to carry out an operation codenamed Foss Fling for the notorious Israeli intelligence agency.

In parallel with this appalling revelation, The Independent ran a story about Adam Werritty, an unofficial “chief of staff” to British Defense Minister Liam Fox, his best man and former flat mate who accompanied him on a number of official visits and virtually made all his decisions and even held top level meetings. Things went wrong though when it became manifest that he had in February arranged a meeting between Fox and senior Mossad operatives at a security conference taking place in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, where they discussed effective plans to overthrow the 'Iranian regime'. Werritty was said to have regularly met Iranian anti-government groups, Israeli operatives and right-wing US groups with an overwhelming interest in destabilizing President Ahmadinejad and overthrowing the Islamic government.

According to the report, Werritty had travelled to Iran on several occasions and held secret meetings with opposition groups with the express intention of expediting the fall of the Islamic government in Iran. Interestingly, MI6 was informed of his connections and debriefed him after he returned from overseas trips.

Werritty was financially backed by murky sources such as Bicom, an Israeli advocacy organization based in the UK. Bicom which stands for Britain Israel Communications Research Center is in fact a front organization based in London tasked with security and intelligence activities as well as promotion of Zionism. Apart from garnering support for the Zionist regime among Britons, the office also serves as a bridge between Mossad and MI6. The CEO of the office, Lorna Fitzsimons, a former MP, is noted for her constant support for the Zionists. She used to be a member of the campaign group, Labor Friends of Israel (LFI). It is basically a lobby group promoting Zionism within the British Labor Party in particular and in Britain, in general. And Werritty is an influential member of the organization and a highly regarded agent for Mossad.

These postulations aside, there has recently emerged an interesting piece of information about a second person held on suspicion of involvement in the alleged plot. The information reveals a man named Gholam Hussein Shakouri who is closely connected with the fabricated prime suspect. Shakouri, who is a cousin of Mansour Arbabsiar, is reportedly a member of the MKO, a notorious anti-Iranian terrorist organization now based at the Ashraf camp in Iraq and strongly supported by the US government although the organization has been widely designated as a terrorist organization. The MKO man has travelled to a number of countries with many fake IDs, including forged Iranian passports. He was last seen in Washington and at Camp Ashraf, where MKO members are based. One of the passports Shakouri used was issued on November 30, 2006 in Washington numbered K10295631. The terrorist organization MKO has more than 3,000 members at the camp. Members of the group have been involved in several assassination and sabotage activities in Iran.

The loosely-structured assassination plot is part of an extensive espionage and sabotage network supported and co-funded by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and CIA.

The marriage of the pernicious intelligence agencies e.g. Mossad, CIA and MI6 in trying to sabotage and cripple the Islamic government indicates a diligently wrought out plan over many years and one which has been heavily funded.

In the final analysis, what seemed at first to be a simplistic effort by the US to corner Iran into political isolation has begun to branch out into ramifications of Kafkaesque proportions.

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-- Ismail Salami is an Iranian author and political analyst. A prolific writer, he has written numerous books and articles on the Middle East. His articles have been translated into a number of languages.