The State Department issued a worldwide travel alert for U.S. citizens on Tuesday, the same day the government charged two men with alleged connections to Iran with conspiring both to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States and to bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C.
The alert, which expires on Jan. 11, "alerts U.S. citizens of the potential for anti-U.S. actions" worldwide, after U.S. officials linked Iran's Quds Force -- the elite special-operations unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard -- to the plot.
One of the accused plotters, Manssor Arbabsiar, is an Iranian-American from Corpus Christi, Texas. Officials said he reached out to a Drug Enforcement Administration informant whom he thought was a member of a Mexican drug cartel to solicit the gang's help in the assassination attempt on Saudi Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir. Attorney General Eric Holder said Arbabsiar has confessed to the plot. The other suspected plotter, Gholam Shakuri, is based in Iran and remains at large.
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