Verbosities

Iran is a state-sponsor of terrorism, designated as such by our government.
State Sponsors of Terrorism

Country :: Designation Date
Iran :: January 19, 1984

What, exactly, does that mean?


State Sponsors: Iran - Council on Foreign Relations

What terrorist groups are linked to Iran?

U.S. officials say Iran mostly backs Islamist groups, including the Lebanese Shiite militants of Hezbollah (which Iran helped found in the 1980s) and such Palestinian terrorist groups as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A few months after Hamas won the Palestinian Authority (PA) elections in early 2006, Iran pledged $50 million to the near-bankrupt PA. The United States, among other nations, has cut off aid to the PA because of Hamas’ terrorist ties.

Iran is suspected of encouraging Hezbollah’s July 2006 attack on Israel to deflect international attention from its nuclear weapons program. Iran was also reportedly involved in a Hezbollah-linked January 2002 attempt to smuggle a boatload of arms to the PA. Some reports also suggest that Iran’s interference in Iraq has included funding, safe transit, and arms to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces.

What terrorist activities have been linked with Iran?

The U.S. government first listed Iran as a terrorist sponsor in 1984. Among its activities have been the following:

* Observers say Iran had prior knowledge of Hezbollah attacks, such as the 1988 kidnapping and murder of Colonel William Higgins, a U.S. Marine involved in a UN observer mission in Lebanon, and the 1992 and 1994 bombings of Jewish cultural institutions in Argentina.
* Iran still has a price on the head of the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie for what Iranian leaders call blasphemous writings about Islam in his 1989 novel The Satanic Verses.
* U.S. officials say Iran supported the group behind the 1996 truck bombing of Khobar Towers, a U.S. military residence in Saudi Arabia, which killed nineteen U.S. servicemen.

From what I can tell, the historical evidence is mainly related to an incident in 1996 orchestrated by a group we believe Iran supports, along with a variety of "sins" against the state of Israel. In the present, the label is being applied to demonize Iran's support of Shiite factions in Iraq, specifically that of Muqtada al-Sadr.

So is Muqtada al-Sadr a terrorist? Well, only if you buy the line that anyone who opposes our occupation "peace" in Iraq is a terrorist:


Muqtada al-Sadr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Muqtada al-Sadr's militia have been involved in widespread ethnic cleansing of Sunni, especially those living in Shia areas. Reports also indicate that the death squads which have been responsible for the deaths of many Sunnis are not the actions of rogue elements but "a carefully orchestrated response to the attacks of Sunni extremists" by Sadr's Mahdi Army .It is however difficult to determine al-Sadr's personal involvement. His public statements have on occasion condemned violence against Sunnis as well as terrorist attacks directed against the Shia population. He has exhorted his followers not to fall into the trap of retaliation leading to civil war. He claims that America stands to gain the most from an Iraqi civil war which would require the continued presence of US troops and put the US in the role of political referee and powerbroker between the warring factions.

I'm certainly not arguing that this behavior isn't despicable, but it's not terrorism, nor was Shiite control "sponsored" by Iran an unpredictable outcome of our poorly strategized invasion.


One More Chalabi Black Eye -- Robert Scheer in The Nation -- August 10, 2004

And beyond Chalabi, why did it so thoroughly escape the Bush Administration and much of the media that in deposing the secular Sunni tyrant Hussein we would open the door for the Iraqi Shiite majority to create its own regime--one that would most likely be sympathetic to Shiite Iran not only for religious reasons but because many of its new leaders had been sheltered, armed and financially supported by Tehran when they were in exile.

How ironic that a close alliance between Iraq and the fanatical ayatollahs of Iran is the most likely accomplishment of the US invasion.

Add to this the argument that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons continues to be an additional bugaboo for our foreign policy elite's argument to war, despite having less than solid ground on which to base this accusation.

So what do we have? We have an Iranian government that supports its ideological Shiite brethren like Hezbollah and, apparently, Sunni groups like Hamas in their efforts against Israel - a state the remainder of the Middle East dislikes as much for their aggressive militarism as they do for their religious ideology (at least). The Iranians also have been backing the Shiite majority in various regions of Iraq, and do so despite the wishes of the American government. The Iranians are also accused of developing nuclear weaponry, a charge which some non-partisan groups dispute.

These are the actions of a rational state interested in the growth of Shiite interests in the region.

Let me be clear what I mean by "rational state." I am not endorsing their actions. I am simply stating that their policies as they relate to their regional relationships make sense, considering their goals. They appear to be interested in regional stability, at least as it relates to the ability of Shiite majorities in places like Iraq to assert their political control.

Don't believe me? Look at this:


In 2003, U.S. Spurned Iran's Offer of Dialogue

Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

[snip]

While the Iranian approach has been previously reported, the actual document making the offer has surfaced only in recent weeks. Trita Parsi, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he obtained it from Iranian sources. The Washington Post confirmed its authenticity with Iranian and former U.S. officials.

Parsi said the U.S. victory in Iraq frightened the Iranians because U.S. forces had routed in three weeks an army that Iran had failed to defeat during a bloody eight-year war.

The document lists a series of Iranian aims for the talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its "legitimate security interests." Iran agreed to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Naturally, our administration is more interested in having an enemy to topple than a friend with whom we can collaborate. But the larger point is that Iran is acting from a position of national interest, not irrational ideology. They have demonstrated (previously, before we ratcheted up our rhetoric identifying them as an enemy) they are willing to work with America to find mutually beneficial solutions to the problems both countries have faced in that region.

Moreover, in the days since we've turned our backs on this opportunity to increase our partnership in the region with Iran, we've increasingly identified them as our opponent, despite very little difference in their national behavior between 2003 and the present.

Why is that? And what exactly is Iran doing that causes us to label them "terrrorists?" Is it really all about Hamas and Hezbollah, and if so, why do we reflexively believe Israel's regional enemies pose some sort of existential threat to America?

No one's arguing that Iranian interests and American interests aren't two wildly different things, and no one's trying to argue that Hezbollah and Hamas don't work against peace in Israel, and no one's trying to argue that supporting al-Sadr's militias isn't throwing a wedge in the (nearly impossible to achieve) goal of a peaceful representative democracy in Iraq.

But I don't get how these actions by Iran are akin to making Ahmadinejad equal to bin Laden and Hitler times ten. And I think the major weakness with American's neoconservative-fueled foreign policy goal is that it refuses to acknowledge when various states in regions in which we're destabilizing we're "encouraging regime change" have national interests that are valid and deserve to be considered as we press forward.

You heard me.

This isn't the same thing as so-called "appeasement." We don't like that China is a Communist state, nor do we like that they are a nuclear power with an enormous army, but we let Wal-Mart buy their products anyway. American interests in this case are well-served by allowing ideology to be put aside for mutually beneficial gains. China gets an increase to their GDP, we get cheaper TVs, China is encouraged not to screw a good thing up by attempting to re-invent the domino theory in southeast Asia (and we don't fuck with their leadership and attempt to "regime change" them into something we think is more palatable to our tastes).

Iran wanted to come to the table in 2003 and explore political gain for all sides. To me, this doesn't sound like the actions of a terrorist state. We had an opportunity to work to make Israel safer and to increase the friendships and partnerships necessary to stabilize the region. We chose not to do so, and instead fan the flames which incite irrational hatred towards Iran.

Iran's current "sponsorship of terrorism" isn't the problem we need to be worried about now. It is to our peril that we refuse to acknowledge the validity of rational state actions in the Middle East if the ideologies which bind them are unpalatable to our own. We should be interested in a Middle East that fosters a sort-of federalist cooperation between the states, in that Sunnis could emigrate to a Sunni state and Shiites to their own, but under a mutually tolerable cooperation where every state recognizes the rights of the others to exist and govern themselves. This is the goal towards which we should be working, as it becomes more and more obvious every day that destabilization in the interest of "regime change" isn't working out all that well.

Is tolerable cooperation in the Middle East a pipe dream? Perhaps. But it's far more noble an idea than the reflexive accusations of terrorism against those states with whom we disagree. Our belligerent posture towards governments who exhibit support of militaristic tactics and, ultimately, terrorism, puts us in a position where negotiation towards international goals becomes impossible. So long as we have this administration in office, our cowboy aesthetic will continue to push rational state actions towards the fringes, taking any chance at cooperation and detente off the table.

If peace and stability is really our goal, we can do better than to turn heads of state into mini-Hitlers when we're trying to put Americans in a mental state of readiness for upcoming war. We should be better than that.

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