Iranians 'plotted' US bomb attack

Fourteen men - 13 Saudis and one Lebanese - were indicted by the US government in their absence yesterday with the terrorist bombing at an American military base in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 servicemen in 1996.

The truck bomb, which injured more than 300 others, exploded outside Khobar Towers, an apartment block in Dharan where the servicemen were living.

The list of thse charged - announced by the US attorney general, John Ashcroft, and the FBI director, Louis Freeh - includes the leader of Saudi Hizbullah and prominent members of Hizbullah's military wing.

Mr Ashcroft said the indictment explained that members of the Iranian government "inspired, supported and supervised" members of Saudi Hizbullah, and that the terror ists "reported surveillance activities to Iranian officials".

The indictment list is more significant for the names it omits than those it includes. Although Mr Ashcroft said Iranians were behind the conspiracy, and warned that more indictments were possible, the omission of Iranians from the list represented a climbdown by the FBI and, in particular, its outgoing director, Mr Freeh, who has made the investigation a personal crusade.

For years the bureau's agents privately insisted that they had enough information to indict senior members of Iranian intelligence, and possibly even the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In a list of suspects Mr Freeh handed to the White House recnetly, there were reported to be several high-ranking Iranian officials.

Brigadier Ahmad Sherifi, a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard, was a leading suspect. Ahmed Vahidi, the head of the Guard's al-Quds (Jerusalem) force - responsible for covert external operations, has also been frequently mentioned.

New Yorker magazine recently quoted prosecution witnesses as saying Brig Sherifi had recruited them as terrorists, saying he was acting on behalf of Ayatollah Khamenei. As the head of the special operations committee of the Tehran government, would have had direct command of all al-Quds operations.

The charges, announced a few days before the fifth anniversary of the bombing, are the culmination of an FBI investigation which was continually muddied by foreign policy manoeuvring and Washington intrigue.

In the New Yorker, Mr Freeh blamed the Clinton administration for putting the brakes on the investigation in the interests of rapprochement with the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami in Iran. Outgoing officials from the Clinton administration, said Mr Freeh, never had the conclusive proof necessary to press charges against Iranian officials.

The Bush administration is similarly reluctant to jeopardise relations with Iran. The president and the vice-president are closely linked with the oil industry which has lobbied for years for the easing of sanctions against Iran to enable US corporations to bid for oil deals.

The Saudi government has also played a role in holding back charges against Iranian officials, in its anxiety to foster better relations with the unpredictable Islamic regime.

In April Riyadh signed a security agreement with Tehran to combat terrorism and crime. It excluded extradition clause. Several of the suspects from Saudi Hizbullah named yesterday live or have spent time in Iran.