I chuckle when I hear and read the oft-repeated claim of Iranian involvement in and support for international terrorism. Not that I think they are innocent. I just find it fascinating that the abundant evidence linking the United States to a variety of terrorist acts and groups somehow never gets brought up.
I got to thinking about all this after I heard our Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Kissinger, "categorically deny" US involvement in the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist yesterday. The only difference between these days and back in the good old days of the Cold War is Pres. Obama all but admitted the US has been seeking any means to disrupt Iran's nuclear research. What makes all of this even more funny - well, except for exploding cars and dead bodies, I suppose - is the US has yet to release evidence of the dread Iranian nukes. Over a decade ago, they were five years away from raining atomic death upon us. They are still, according to recent reports from both the CIA and Israel, about a decade away. Are they that incompetent? Have the disruptions in their research program noted in the linked article - three other targeted murders, "mysterious explosions", and a computer virus unleashed on Iran's internal security networks, including the one with their nuclear data - continued to push back the date of the inevitable Iranian bomb?
Or could it be, as the UN continues to say and Iran continues to insist, that Iran is doing peaceful nuclear research?
The US would be more credible if the frothing dogs of so much of our discredited foreign policy establishment hadn't spent the better part of three decades trying to spark a war between the US and Iran (well, except for that one time we sent them weapons so Oliver North could give the proceeds to one of our terrorist clients, the drug-running Nicaraguan Contras; so, I suppose by a circuitous route, that counts as sponsoring terrorism, huh). Just the other day, Max Boot, one of those so-called "establishment scholars" who enjoys imagining other people fighting and killing and dying in wars he dreams up, insisted that the "anti-bombing side" (what a strange construction) had yet to offer any convincing arguments. These folks revel in destruction.
While not insisting that Iran is a blushing bride in the state-sponsored terrorism brothel, I think it fair enough to note that the US is the madame. It may well be there is abundant evidence of Iran's nuclear program being specifically for a weapon for use against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other regional targets. It may well be that the ongoing low-level conflict in all its variety continues to push back the inevitable development of an Iranian nuclear weapon.
The least all involved could do is be grown ups about this. Not that I expect any US Secretary of State to stand before the press and say, "Sure, we killed 'em. I'm damn proud of it, too!". We could, I should think, understand that we Americans have hands just as bloody as any other state sponsor of terrorism.
