"“The Iranians absolutely believe the U.S. and Israel have been carrying out a covert campaign against them,” said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University. “And clearly they are right.”
Mr. Sick, like many specialists, said he had trouble fully accepting the administration’s interpretation of the suspected plot to kill the Saudi ambassador. The man prosecutors say was at the center of the scheme, a whiskey-drinking used-car dealer named Mansour J. Arbabsiar, seems an unlikely agent for the sophisticated Quds Force, the external arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, he said.
But he said the Guards, who oversee Iran’s nuclear program and had ties to the murdered scientists, would be looking for ways to avenge or deter such attacks. “A mysterious killing in Washington might well look like payback for the scientists,” he said. “It’s the incompetence of this plot that’s so hard to believe.”" And I should say that Sick is a sober investigator: read his book on the "October surprise."
