Post Exclusive: Notorious Iranian militant has a connection to alleged assassination plot against Saudi envoy
When nearly $100,000 landed in an undercover FBI bank account from a source linked to an Iranian paramilitary force, officials began taking seriously an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador that at first had seemed outlandish.
And as the investigation unfolded over recent months, a name emerged that chilled some in the U.S. government. The Iranian cousin of the man accused of plotting the assassination was Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior commander in Iran’s Quds Force, who had been linked to the killing of American troops in Iraq.
Shahlai was known as the guiding hand behind an elite group of gunmen from the feared militia of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. They had dressed as American and Iraqi soldiers and, in a convoy of white SUVs, stormed a provincial government building in Karbala on Jan. 20, 2007.
Five Americans were killed and three were wounded in the attack, whose brazenness rattled the military. The daring raid became even more notorious after some of the suspected killers were later released by the Iraqi government.
The U.S. military found a 22-page memo that detailed preparations for the operation and tied it to the Quds Force, a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Treasury officials singled out Shahlai as “the final approving and coordinating authority” for the Iran-based training of members of Sadr’s militia before they went back to Iraq to attack coalition forces.
The 54-year-old Iranian also supplied parts of Sadr’s militia with large quantities of C-4 plastic explosives, 122mm grad rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, according to the U.S. Treasury report targeting him for sanctions.
“The Quds Force is Iran’s arm for supporting terrorists and planning attacks. . . . It has, in the past, reached out to groups that might seem unlikely partners,” said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation…