Top Saudis asked group to conduct assassinations in Iran

WASHINGTON — 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 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 indicate that top Saudi officials have been considering assassinations since the beginning of Mohammed’s ascent.

Saudi officials have said Khashoggi’s death was 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 sabotage the Iranian economy.

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

The interest in assassinations, covert operations and military campaigns like the war in Yemen — overseen by Mohammed — is a change for the kingdom, which historically has avoided a foreign policy that could create instability.

As for the businessmen, who had intelligence backgrounds, they saw their Iran plan both as a lucrative source of income and a way to cripple a country that both they and the Saudis considered a threat. However, when asked if they would conduct assassinations, the businessmen rejected the plan.

George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, who arranged the original meeting, told the Saudis about a London-based company run by former British special operations troops that might take on the contract. It is not known whether a company was suggested.

Assiri was dismissed last month when the Saudi government acknowledged Khashoggi’s killing and said he had organized the operation. On Saturday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said his government had handed over a recording of Khashoggi’s killing to the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Britain and France.