Mexico's PRI party claims Iranian plot against U.S. was all make believe

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico with an iron fist for 70 years, until the presidential election of 2000, which it lost to former president Vicente Fox. PRI lost again in 2006, to Mexico's current PAN (National Action Party) president Felipe Calderón. PRI is determined to recapture the presidency next year, and most political observers here agree that it has an excellent chance of doing so.

The centerpiece of PRI's 2012 campaign strategy is its opposition to Calderón's five year old war against the drug cartels, which it says has been a failure and a disastrous mistake. Today a PRI senate leader, Carolos Jiménez Macías (pictured below), upped the ante by accusing U.S. and Mexican authorities of having fabricated an Iranian plot to kill one or more foreign ambassadors in Washington, D.C. The plot was broken up by the FBI on September 29 with the arrest of one of the two Iranian ringleaders in New York, but the Justice Department did not disclose details until earlier this week. One of those details was that the arrested Iranian had traveled several times to Mexico to deal with a drug cartel sicario (hit man) who was supposed to carry out the murder(s). The hit man was in fact a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) undercover operative.

U.S. officials have praised Mexico's cooperation and assistance in busting up the plot, and some Calderón officials took a bow earlier this week when the story broke. But the whole event may never have occurred, suggests the PRI political boss. "Let's see if over time it doesn't appear that the Americans (set up) the whole 'plot,'" said Jiménez Macíasn, who chairs the Mexican Senate's Asian-Pacific Foreign Affairs Committee. He also claimed that the episode was part of a U.S. attempt to intervene in Mexico's internal affairs.

Footnote: In a wide ranging September 28 interview with the New York Times published this weekend, president Calderón said that there are some in PRI who would prefer to return to the "old days," and try to "make a deal" with organized crime forces. That's a very charitable understatement. During decades of PRI control, nothing was done to curb the growing influence of drug traffickers. Even during the presidency of Calderón's immediate predecessor, Vicente Fox (a half-baked, early edition PANista), very little was done. Felipe Calderón is the first president in the history of Mexico to launch a full scale offensive against domestic criminals -- the drug cartels. The question is, will that offensive go up in smoke when a new president takes office in December 2012?

More on the Iranian plot: http://mexicogulfreporter.blogspot.com/2011/10/us-busts-iranian-plot-to-assassinate.html.

More on PRI: http://mexicogulfreporter.blogspot.com/2011/10/writer-excoriates-mexicos-pri-party.html; and: http://mexicogulfreporter.blogspot.com/2011/10/jurrasic-park-in-mexico.html.