Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, has been identified as the target of an assassination attempt by "factions of the Iranian government," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a news conference on Tuesday.
The plot, which included plans to bomb the Saudi Arabian and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C., called for members of a Mexican drug cartel to kill al-Jubeir, ABC News reports.
Bloomberg Business Week reports that Manssor Arbabsiar has been arrested and charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. Gholam Shakuri has been charged but remains at large.
Who is Adel al-Jubeir, the suspects' alleged target?
According to the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Adel A. al-Jubeir has served as ambassador to the United States since January 29, 2007. Before he became ambassador, he spent two years as an adviser to the Royal Court. From 2000 to 2005, he was foreign affairs adviser in the Crown Prince’s Court.
During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, al-Jubeir worked for the Saudi Arabian government in the Joint Information Bureau in Dhahran.
Washington Life reports that Al-Jubeir "had the unenviable job of convincing Americans that their best friends in the Middle East had not turned against them" after it became clear that 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers were Saudi Arabian.
The New York Times in 2006 called al-Jubeir the "the public face of Saudi Arabia" and linked him to Campbell Brown when she was the White House correspondent for NBC News.
Laura Rozen from Yahoo! News reported in September that al-Jubeir delivered a "private message to President Obama" from Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and then returned to Saudi Arabia. The contents of the message is unclear.
Al-Jubeir, who speaks Arabic, English and German, was educated in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, Germany in the United States. He holds a bachelors degree from the University of North Texas and a masters degree in international relations from Georgetown University.
LOOK: Photos of Adel al-Jubeir:
