WarSclerotic

Officials from the U.S. and unnamed Middle Eastern countries believe a recent plot to kill Americans in Azerbaijan was part of a larger effort by Iranian-linked operatives to kill foreign diplomats in at least seven countries over the past year, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

Among the targeted foreigners were two Saudi officials, about a half-dozen Israelis, and, in Azerbaijan, a group of Americans, the officials said according to The Washington Post.

The officials said new evidence uncovered in recent weeks by investigators working in four countries shows a connection between the different assassination attempts that ties all of them to Iranian-supported Hezbollah terrorists or agents based in Iran.

An official report last month presenting the evidence and seen by two of the officials showed that there were phone records, forensic tests, coordinated travel arrangements and cellphone SIM cards purchased in Iran that belonged to the potential assailants.

The officials pointed out that the assassination attempts came to a sudden halt in the early spring just as Iran began to change its tone after several weeks of hostile anti-West rhetoric and threats to close down the Strait of Hormuz. In March, Tehran agreed to return to negotiations over its nuclear program with the five world powers plus Germany.

“There appears to have been a deliberate attempt to calm things down ahead of the talks,” said one Western diplomat who spoke to The Washington Post on condition of anonymity. “What happens if the talks fail — that’s anyone’s guess.”

The officials, and experts in the U.S. and Middle East, see the plots as part of an ongoing covert war in which Iran is trying to retaliate for a series of assassinations of its nuclear scientists. Iran has blamed the U.S. and Israel for the assassinations, but it has consistently denied any involvement in attempts to assassinate foreign envoys in other countries.

However, the officials say that the assassination attempts in Azerbaijan fit a pattern that was apparent in other recent attempts linked to Iran.

In October, the thwarted assassination of the Saudi ambassador in Washington involved a similar plot to hire criminal gangs to kill a senior envoy in public, U.S. intelligence officials noted.

The report released last month also cited extensive links between attempted assassinations of diplomats in five other countries: India, Turkey, Thailand, Pakistan and the former Soviet republic of Georgia, The Washington Post reported.

In February, Israeli and Indian officials said there were substantial Iranian links to a car bombing that seriously wounded the wife of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s attache in New Delhi.

Washington has refused to directly link the plots in Azerbaijan to the Iranian government, in an attempt to avoid provoking hostilities at a time when the U.S. and Iran are engaged in talks on curbing Iran’s nuclear program.

The U.S. acknowledged in March that its embassy may have been among the intended targets of the assassination plot but information divulged later by suspects under questioning revealed that “other objects” in Baku had been on the list of targets, not just buildings.

“They were going after individuals,” said a former U.S. State Department official who worked closely with the embassy in Baku. “They had names [of employees]. And they were interested in family members, too.”