The Need to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable

But what's the truth about Iran? While Saudi Arabia and Qatar finance Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, there must be reasons why U.S. officials line up to profess that Iran is the "chief sponsor of terrorism."

Well, apparently that is a reference to Iran's support for Hezbollah, a Shiite movement in southern Lebanon that emerged as a resistance to Israeli occupation of that area in the 1980s. For years, Hezbollah has attacked Israeli targets in a tit-for-tat shadow war of assassinations and bombings that has crossed the line into terrorism by both sides. But neither Hezbollah nor Iran have been connected to any significant terror attack aimed at Americans in the past couple of decades.

Indeed, the usual citation regarding Iranian "terrorism" is the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks near Beirut airport in 1983, but that attack was not "terrorism," at least as it is classically defined as an intentional attack on civilians with the intent of achieving a political objective.

The factual details here are important. President Ronald Reagan deployed the Marines as "peacekeepers" following Israel's invasion and occupation of much of Lebanon. However, as fighting continued, there was mission creep.

National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, who often represented Israel's interests in the upper echelons of the Reagan administration, convinced the President to authorize the USS New Jersey to fire long-distance shells into Muslim villages, killing civilians and convincing Shiite militants that the United States had joined the conflict.

On Oct. 23, 1983, Shiite militants struck back, sending a suicide truck bomber through U.S. security positions, demolishing the high-rise Marine barracks in Beirut and killing 241 American servicemen.

Though the U.S. news media immediately labeled the Marine barracks bombing an act of "terrorism" -- and that misnomer has stuck -- Reagan administration insiders knew better, recognizing that McFarlane's "mission creep" had made the U.S. troops vulnerable to retaliation.

"When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they assumed the American 'referee' had taken sides," Gen. Colin Powell wrote in his memoir, My American Journey. In other words, Powell, who was then military adviser to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, recognized that the actions of the U.S. military had altered the status of the Marines in the eyes of the Shiites.

But that is not to say that in the 1980s and the early 1990s Iran did not support actions that would constitute "terrorism." There were the kidnappings of American civilians in Lebanon (and possibly the retaliatory bombing of PanAm 103 in 1988 after the U.S. Navy had shot down an Iranian civilian airliner a few months earlier). But the main reason that Iran is still touted as the "chief sponsor of terrorism" is that it remains at the top of Israel's and Saudi Arabia's enemies list, not that the label is justified by recent events and evidence.

The claim by some Americans that Iran's support for Iraqi resistance to the American military occupation of Iraq was "terrorism" also turns the concept on "terrorism" on its head since American soldiers who have conquered a sovereign nation are not "civilians" and thus attacking them with IEDs or other weapons does not constitute "terrorism."

The more recent complaints about Iranian "aggression" are even more dishonest. Iran has been invited by the sovereign governments of Iraq and Syria to assist in fighting Islamic State and Al Qaeda terrorists in those countries. Under international law, there is nothing illegal about that and it surely does not constitute "aggression."

Saudi Arabia and the State Department have also accused Iran of supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen, although the extent of that assistance is apparently negligible and whatever it is, it is vastly overwhelmed by Saudi Arabia's massive bombardment of Yemen, a true act of aggression that has killed hundreds if not thousands of civilians and is supported by the Obama administration.

Politicians Held Hostage

So, when I hear major U.S. officials repeat the falsehood about Iran as the "chief sponsor of terrorism" again and again, I'm reminded of a hostage video in which a captive is forced to read lies written by his captors who would inflict pain or death if the captive deviated from the script. But it's hard to tell if these U.S. officials know that they're lying or have internalized the lie as "truth."

If some U.S. official did publicly pronounce the truth -- that Saudi Arabia far outranks Iran as the "chief sponsor of terrorism" and that many people in the world would put the United States even higher -- the truth-teller might never survive another Senate confirmation hearing, since the Israel Lobby would call in its chits and make an example of the apostate.

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