This week’s revelation that the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. was targeted for assassination was big news — not only because of the links to Iran, but also because had it happened, it would have marked one of the few times in history that a foreign diplomat was killed while serving in Washington.

DCist couldn’t help noticing a number of strikingly different looking diplomatic license plates popping up on some vehicles around Washington over the past couple of weeks. From far away, the color scheme and design of the plates couldn’t be easily identified as having been been issued by the U.S. Department of State, and we wondered whether they belonged to another sovereign nation, like maybe there was some kind of Canadian diplomatic conference being held…