Armed and Dangerous: the corporate origins of war with Iran

assassination plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US.1 According to the FBI, an alcoholic car salesman in Texas, Manssor Arbasier, with a spurious family connection to a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, plotted with the Mexican Los Zetas drug cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador on orders from forces within the Iranian State.2 The source of these allegations was a Mexican gangster, already facing criminal charges on an unrelated matter, who was coerced to offer his services as an assassin for $1.5 million by the FBI. Although clearly a fabrication, this alleged ‘plot ’ has led to further punitive sanctions against Iran and increased the threat of war. In particular, it has seen the deployment of two US warships in the Gulf of Hormuz and increased co-operation between the US Special Forces and those of the United Arab Emirates under the rubric of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-GCC [Gulf Co-operation Council].3 In this article I will draw on historical and contemporary material to ask how this came about and, in particular, to look at the role of the energy security industry and private intelligence and military contractors in the preparation for war with Iran. Ridiculous as they were, the charges of an Iranian assassination plot on US soil were timely. They followed a