Mattis: U.S. flubbed response to Iranian bombing attempt

POLITICO

ASPEN, Colo.—The U.S. made a serious mistake by not responding more assertively to an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in a bomb attack on a popular Washington restaurant, just-retired CENTCOM commander James Mattis said Saturday.

At an October 2011 press conference Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that Iran's government had attempted to use a Mexican drug cartel to arrange the killing of the Saudi official, Adel Al-Jubeir, while dining at Cafe Milano in Georgetown. An Iranian-American living in Texas, Manssor Arbabsiar, and Iranian al-Quds force offifical Gholam Shakuri were charged with conspiring to carry out the bombing—which the U.S. officials said was headed off with the help of an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency informant.

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"When we finally caught them in the act of trying to kill Adel, we had a beleaguered attorney general, a fine man but beleaguered politically, stand up and give a legal argument that frankly I couldn't understand," Mattis said at the Aspen Security Forum. "We caught them in the act and yet we let them walk free."

Without being specific, Mattis suggested Iran should have suffered some more serious consequence for being behind the alleged plot.

"Frankly, I‘m not sure why, again, they haven’t been held to account," he said. "They have been basically not held to account....I don’t know why the attempt on Adel wasn’t dealt with more strongly."

Mattis said the U.S. and its allies were risking even more aggressive Iranian attacks on their soil by not creating firmer consequences for the attempted bombing in Washington.

"We've got to be very careful of avoiding confrontation with Iran because right now with their cyber effort, they're like children balancing lightbulbs full of nitroglycerin. You get the picture? One of these days they're going to drop one and it's going to knock out the London stock exchange or Wall Street because we never drew a line and said, 'You won't do it.'...It's also very important once and a while that we say, 'This is what we absolutely will not tolerate'."

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Iranian officials have denied any involvement in the plot. During a public interview here, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Mattis if it was certain that the Iranians were involved.

"Absolutely. That was their plan and absent one fundamental mistake, they would have done it," the retired commander said. "They actually set out to do it. It was not a rogue agent off on his own. This decision was taken at the very highest levels in Tehran. Again absent one mistake, they would have murdered Adel and Americans at that restaurant a couple miles from the White House."

Mattis said Iran has a well-established record of targeting Saudi diplomats worldwide.

"Iran has killed the Saudi diplomat in Karachi. They murdered the assistant military attache in Sanaa, Yemen.] They are out to kill diplomats from Saudi Arabia and from Israel," Mattis said. "They have got this thing about Saudi Arabia and their religious credentials. This is this 1400 year old Sunni, Shia schism that is coming back violently."

Arbabsiar pled guilty last year and was sentenced in May to 25 years in prison on charges of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries. Shakuri remains at large.

Mattis said after his public interview that he did not intend to focus his criticism on Holder, but the overall U.S. response. He said other senior officials should have spoken out to signal to Iran that the U.S. was taking the matter seriously. Asked if he advocated for or considered any military options to respond to the episode, the retired general declined to comment.

Holder vowed as he announced the charges in the case that some additional action would be taken against Iran. "In addition to holding these individual conspirators accountable for their alleged role in this plot, the United States is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions,” Holder said.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on Mattis's criticism.

It's possible U.S. officials concluded that a showdown with Tehran over the alleged bomb plot could risk disrupting diplomacy with Iran related to that country's nuclear program.

Despite Mattis's apparent desire for a more aggressive response to the alleged Iranian plot in Washington, he stressed that military options for dealing with Iran's nuclear program would provide only temporary relief.

"I don’t think anyone can destroy a program that has spread out from Tehran to the mountains, from underground facilities to above ground. And much of it is destroying access to underground facilities. With a good backhoe, you can open that back up," the retired general said.

Mattis said all the U.S. and others can do militarily is impede the program for a while.

"Certainly, it can be delayed a month, 6 months, 18 months. What do you do with the delay is the question," he said. "The military can buy our diplomats some time, but it cannot solve this problem straight up."

Despite overseeing an active war in Afghanistan and the wind-down of a war in Iraq, Mattis said Iran was his primary focus during his time atop Central Command.

"The first three things I asked my briefers about when I woke every morning were Iran, Iran and Iran," he said.