Iran denies claims it plotted to assassinate Saudi ambassador to U.S.

TEHRAN,Oct.21(MNA)– On Saturday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast once again denied the claims that the Iranian government had been involved in an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, in 2011. Mehmanparast made the remarks in response to the fact that an Iranian-born Texas man, named Mansour J. Arbabsiar, who had been charged in a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in 2011, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy and other counts in Federal District Court in Manhattan. According to the New York Times, Arbabsiar, a used-car salesman, had been accused of conspiring to hire assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million to kill the ambassador. At the time the charges were announced, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that the plot had been “directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government.” Mehmanparast dismissed the scenario as “laughable”, noting that the U.S. is using its judicial system as a tool to devise “crude” scenarios against other countries.