Salman Offered Candidate Trump Assassination Program on Iran

I have written regularly about this angle on Trump’s impossible victory in the 2016 presidential U.S. Election. While the Hillary Democrats and the US intelligence community went after decoy Putin and Russia. Nice play Bibi Netanyahu.

[Links in article below are mine – Oui]

Saudis Close to Crown Prince Discussed Killing Other Enemies a Year Before Khashoggi’s Death | NY Times |

Top Saudi intelligence officials close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked a small group of businessmen last year about using private companies to assassinate Iranian enemies of the kingdom, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

The Saudis inquired at a time when Prince Mohammed, then the deputy crown prince and defense minister, was consolidating power and directing his advisers to escalate military and intelligence operations outside the kingdom. Their discussions, more than a year before the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, indicate that top Saudi officials have considered assassinations since the beginning of Prince Mohammed’s ascent.

Continued below the fold …

Saudi officials have portrayed Mr. Khashoggi’s death as a rogue killing ordered by an official who has since been fired. But that official, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, was present for a meeting in March 2017 in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where the businessmen pitched a $2 billion plan to use private intelligence operatives to try to sabotage the Iranian economy.

○ Salman Hit Squad Murdered Khashoggi

During the discussion, part of a series of meetings where the men tried to win Saudi funding for their plan, General Assiri’s top aides inquired about killing Qassim Suleimani, the leader of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and a man considered a determined enemy of Saudi Arabia.

…
As for the businessmen, who had intelligence backgrounds, they saw their Iran plan both as a lucrative source of income and as a way to cripple a country that they and the Saudis considered a profound threat. George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, arranged the meeting. He had met previously with Prince Mohammed, and had pitched the Iran plan to Trump White House officials. Another participant in the meetings was Joel Zamel, an Israeli with deep ties to his country’s intelligence and security agencies.

○ Collusion Trump Transition Team with UAE/Israel

Both Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel are witnesses in the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and prosecutors have asked them about their discussions with American and Saudi officials about the Iran proposal. It is unclear how this line of inquiry fits into Mr. Mueller’s broader inquiry. In 2016, a company owned by Mr. Zamel, Psy-Group, had pitched the Trump campaign on a social media manipulation plan.

George Nader, who was cooperating with the Mueller investigation, has fled to the UAE after UAE officials “pulled strings” with the Trump administration, the Daily Mail reports (_link)

— Liz Sly (@LizSly) March 22, 2018

[Al-Jazeera recently noted that Nader worked for over a year in a brazen attempt to curry favor with the Republican National Committee on behalf of the UAE.]

A spokesman for the Saudi government declined to comment, as did lawyers for both Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel.