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Two Iranian men have been indicted by a grand jury in New York on charges they plotted to hire hit men from a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington using "weapons of mass destruction".
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara said a five-count criminal indictment has been filed against Manssor Arbabsiar, 56 who would be arraigned in court on October 24 when he is expected to enter a plea.
His co-defendant, Gholam Shakuri, remains at large. The charges in the indictment mirror those that were alleged in the criminal complaint filed on October 11 that said the two conspired to murder a foreign official, conspired to use a weapon of mass destruction and to commit an act of international terrorism transcending national boundaries.
The case has been assigned to US District Judge John Keenan of the Southern District of New York.
According to the indictment, Arbabsiar and Shakuri conspired to "kill the Ambassador to the United States of Saudi Arabia, while the Ambassador was in the United States".
The plot, allegedly directed by elements of the Iranian government, involved bombing a restaurant in the US that Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir frequented. Arbabsiar allegedly dismissed as "no big deal" concerns an undercover agent had raised that others, including US senators who dine at the restaurant, could also be killed in the attack.
According to the complaint, Arbabsiar admitted to agents that, in connection with this plot, he was recruited, funded and directed by men he understood to be senior officials in Iran's Qods Force.
Arbabsiar allegedly said these Iranian officials were aware of the means by which the Ambassador would be killed and the casualties that would likely result. He allegedly met in Mexico with an undercover agent, who had posed as an associate of a violent international drug trafficking cartel.
Arbabsiar arranged to hire the agent and his accomplices to murder the Ambassador and with Shakuri's approval, he wire transferred $100,000 to a US bank account for the killing.
Iran has termed US's allegations as "fabricated and baseless" saying it is a "well-thought evil plot" in line with the US anti-Iranian policy to divert attention from America's current economic problems and protests against its long supported dictatorial regimes abroad.
According to state-run television, Iran's Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi said the US allegations were "too cheap to believe".
"When you look at it from an intelligence standpoint, there are too many contradictions to believe that a government such as the United States could compile such a cheap claim and expect to it to be credible," he said.