Iranian Ambassador Slams U.S. ‘Fabrications’ over Alleged Plot

Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Ghazanfar Roknabadi stressed that the U.S. “fabrications” against Iran reveal that Washington “failed” in all the other matters during this critical stage.

Roknabadi handed Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour a letter on Thursday concerning the U.S. accusations of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington Adel al-Joubeir.

He discussed with Mansour the “preparations for the upcoming visit by the Iranian Foreign Minister (Ali Akbar Salehi) to Lebanon.”

Roknabadi noted that “the important issue is that the accused person holds the U.S. nationality along with the Iranian nationality.”

However, Iran has repeatedly denied any involvement and claimed the allegations are politically motivated.

The United States says its chief suspect, an Iranian used-car salesman who is a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Texas, Manssor Arbabsiar, confessed to acting as an agent for his cousin, whom he described as a high-ranking official in the Quds Force that forms part of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Arbabsiar is alleged to have tried to contract a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, possibly through the bombing of a Washington restaurant.

But, according to U.S. officials, Arbabsiar's contact in the cartel was a paid FBI informant who raised the alert.

All their accusations “are assumptions and didn’t reach a result,” Roknabadi said.

“We have demanded the U.S. officially and twice to provide us with the documents (about alleged evidence), but so far we have not directly received anything,” he stressed.