TAIL BITES DOG

"U.S. charges two Iranians with assassination plot"

"Saudi Arabia: Iran Must Pay Price for Alleged Plot"

"Terror plot aids Iran hardliners, fuels enmity with U.S."

"U.S. to make diplomatic push after alleged Iranian plot revealed"
-----------------------------------------------
What's the big deal?
Everybody does it.

But now, even an attempt to assasinate just one Saudi Arabian "diplomat" is outrageous even though all 911 hijackers (with exception of one from the UAE), were from Saudi Arabia.
------------------------------------------

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12333 (http://www.archives.gov/federal
register/codification/executive-order/12333.html)
which stated, "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination."

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) employed what they call "focused foiling" or targeted killing, against those suspected by Israel of intending to perform a specific act of violence in the very near future, or to be linked indirectly with several acts of violence (organizing, planning, researching means of destruction, etc.),
thus raising the likelihood that his or her killing would foil similar activities in the future.

Israeli minister Rehavam Zeevi was assassinated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
In 1943, the United States military used knowledge from decoded transmissions to carry out a targeted killing of the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.[10]

The U.S. attempted several times to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro.

In 1986, the American air strikes against Libya included an attack on the barracks where Muammar al-Gaddafi was known to be sleeping.

On November 3, 2002, a US Central Intelligence Agency-operated MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) fired a Hellfire missile that destroyed a car carrying six suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The target of the attack was Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, the top al-Qaeda operative in Yemen. Among those killed in the attack was a US citizen, Yemeni-American Ahmed Hijazi.

On June 7, 2006, US Forces dropped one laser-guided bomb on Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His death was confirmed the next day.

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the founder of the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda, was killed by gunshot wounds in a raid by United States special
operations forces on his safe house in Bilal Town, Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Russia employed a similar strategy in the course of its First and Second Chechen Wars. Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudaev was killed by an air strike of the Russian Air Force on April 21, 1996, and Aslan Maskhadov was killed on March 8, 2005. On July 10, 2006, Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel, was killed in an explosion in a targeted Russian attack.

Alexander Litvinenko in 1996, a former KGB officer, was murdered by Andrey Lugovoy in Great Britain by means of the radioactive element polonium-210.

Litvinenko had obtained political asylum in Great Britain, and was an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and the Russian security services.
Russia refused Britain's request to extradite Andrey Lugovoy to face murder charges and Lugovoy was later elected to the Russian State Duma.

Litvinenko himself blamed his murder on Putin.