Arbabsiar Plot to Assassinate Saudi Ambassador (2011)

In October 2011, the US Department of Justice announced the indictment of Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri for an IRGC-Quds Force-directed plot to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in Washington DC. The operation was directed by senior IRGC-QF officer Abdul Reza Shahlai. The scheme involved hiring an alleged Mexican drug cartel hitman — in reality a DEA informant — to carry out the killing on US soil, potentially at a Washington restaurant. Shakuri, a Tehran-based IRGC-QF officer, directed Arbabsiar — his Iranian-American cousin with no intelligence background — and wired $100,000 as a down-payment. The FBI disrupted the plot and arrested Arbabsiar on October 11, 2011. Shakuri was indicted in absentia and remains at large in Iran. Arbabsiar pleaded guilty in 2012 and was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. The plot is a landmark case demonstrating IRGC-QF willingness to conduct assassination operations on US soil using diaspora proxies.